While the numbers and health risks are still low, the new “Cicada” strain of COVID-19 has been slowly — but heavily — mutating since it arrived at SFO last summer. Officials say it may be capable of evading immunity, and they warn that COVID typically spreads more rapidly in the summer months.

The variant was first identified in South Africa in late 2024 and reached the US at least by last June, when it was first detected in a traveler who landed at San Francisco International Airport from the Netherlands, according to the CDC. Since then, it’s been detected in at least 31 states and more than 30 countries, though overall prevalence remains low, as Today reports.

Nicknamed “Cicada” for its tendency to fade into the background before resurfacing, the variant has been traveling undetected behind more dominant strains for two years. According to NBC Bay Area, wastewater monitoring has picked up traces in the Bay Area, but not at significant levels so far.

Experts say the mutations of the Ciacada strain could help it sidestep existing immunity and potentially gain traction during the summer, as COVID transmission spiked during the summer months in 2024 and 2025, as SFist previously reported.

“This very mutated version could certainly make its rounds when we’re both immunologically more vulnerable and we get together during the summer,” said UCSF infectious disease specialist Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, per NBC Bay Area.

Researchers say the Cicada variant stands out for its extensive mutations, particularly in the spike protein — the part of the virus targeted by vaccines and prior immune responses, per Today. Those changes could make it harder for the immune system to recognize, potentially reducing protection from past infections or vaccinations, according to findings published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Even so, there’s no indication it causes more severe illness. “It’s not a more problematic strain than previous ones,” said Dr. Adolfo García-Sastre of Mount Sinai, pointing to data from countries where the variant is more widespread.

Estimates of its spread vary — CDC wastewater data put the variant at about 7% of samples nationwide in late March, while Stanford’s WastewaterSCAN project found it in roughly 20% of sequenced samples in early April. Reduced surveillance in recent years has made it harder to pin down its true prevalence, as Today reports.

The variant’s mutations have also reportedly raised questions about vaccine performance. Current COVID-19 shots, designed to target older strains, are still expected to protect against severe disease, though lab studies suggest they may be less effective against the Cicada strain. Health officials note vaccines can be updated seasonally to better match circulating variants.

Nevertheless, experts continue to recommend vaccination for reducing severe illness and limiting spread, particularly for older adults and people with underlying conditions.

Related: There’s a Scary New COVID Variant, and Stanford Scientists Say It’s Already in California

Image: peterschreiber.media/Getty Images

• California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Friday during a press conference in SF that he’s awarding the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego a total of $412 million to fund programs supporting the homeless. SF will receive $39.9 million for two shelters and three navigation centers through June 2029, which serve 600 adults and 75 youth per night. [KTVU]

• The San Jose City Council voted to ban ICE from using 11 city-owned garages and parking lots and 75 community centers and libraries. Meanwhile, Alameda County officials are working on proposals for creating “ICE-free zones” at all county-owned facilities. [KRON4, Oaklandside]
• In response to President Trump eliminating MLK Day from the list of national park free days, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that all entry fees to over 200 California state parks will be waived Monday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the 100th anniversary of Black History Month. [KQED]

National:

• A vaccine trial that was being conducted by the CDC in West Africa was abruptly cancelled after an unnamed official revealed that the study was allowing children and infants to be exposed to Hepatitis B. [The New Republic]
• ICE officers in Minneapolis threw a tear gas canister into a car that was occupied by a family of eight, causing the couple’s infant, who has since recovered, to stop breathing and begin foaming at the mouth. [CNN]

• Actor Matthew McConaughey said he’s trademarked his identity, filing eight applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office to prevent his likeness from being used by AI without permission, including his customary “alright, alright, alright” catchphrase. [KRON4]

Video of the Day:

In preparation for California Academy of Sciences’ big memorial Sunday for Claude, the late albino alligator, Boudin Bakery’s master baker Fernando Padilla, who’s been with Boudin for 46 years, has been hard at work constructing the world’s largest sourdough alligator. Measuring an impressive eight feet long and consisting of 70 pounds of dough, the gator is as long as the bakery’s oven, complete with maraschino cherries for eyes.

Smaller sourdough gators will be available for purchase at Boudin Bakery for a limited time — not the memorial event as previously reported [correction].

Image: Leanne Maxwell

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Following that federal judge's ruling on Monday that abruptly ended mask mandates on planes and public transit, BART reportedly told its police not to enforce mask-wearing on Tuesday. But now, they've issued a statement similar to the SFMTA's saying masks are still required, for now.

The official word from BART on Tuesday was, "BART officials are currently touching base with other transit agencies in the Bay Area and looking to see if there is any movement on the local, state, or federal, level about a mask mandate for transit. BART hasn't made an official or final determination if a mask mandate will continue on BART." Though the Chronicle reported, via an anonymous source connected to BART, that enforcement of the mask policy was ending — and ABC 7 reported the same.

Meanwhile, the SFMTA was taking a wait-and-see approach, and continuing to require masks on its trains and buses, saying Tuesday that the mandate will stay in place "as this issue makes its way through our legal process."

President Joe Biden made comments Tuesday basically saying it's now up to individuals to protect themselves, mask-wise, if they so choose. But then the Department of Justice put out a statement vaguely saying it would support the CDC and appeal the judge's ruling "subject to CDC's conclusion that the order remains necessary for public health."

Basically, the DoJ is saying, "Is this really worth our efforts if the mandate was going to expire May 3 anyway?"

BART updated its stance on Wednesday, April 20, saying, "Face masks are still required at BART while we review our options and wait to hear back from the state. We are seeking clarity from the state if there is a state level mask mandate for transit that we can use to continue requiring and enforcing a mask mandate. BART hasn't made an official or final determination if a mask mandate will continue on BART. Once we make an official determination, we will communicate it."

So! The masks may not be around much longer, but, for now, you still need to carry one if you're planning to use BART or Muni. But not AC Transit! The East Bay's transit agency announced late Tuesday that it was dropping its mask mandate and making masking mandatory as of midnight last night.

Update: As of 5 p.m. on Wednesday, BART reversed itself and said masks were optional, following an announcement by the state Department of Public Health to that effect. Still, as the Chronicle reports, BART's board is pushing to reinstate the mandate, and will consider doing that at its April 28 meeting.

Also, Uber says you can ride in the front seat again, mask-free.

Previously: Masks Come Off on BART, Airplanes, and In Uber and Lyft Cars — But Not Muni — Following Ruling By Trump-Appointed Judge

Photo: SFBART/Twitter

California has returned to the CDC's yellow or "moderate" tier for COVID transmission after a brief return to the orange zone, and now it's the only state in yellow status this week.

The CDC updated its COVID data tracker on Monday, and while much of the country remains in red or "high" status for COVID spread, there are now six states — Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida — in the orange or "substantial" tier. California and the territory of Puerto Rico stand alone in the yellow tier.

California was previously in the yellow tier at the beginning of October, and slipped back into the orange tier last week. But we're back at yellow, with a seven-day average of 34.4 new cases per 100,000 residents.

At the county level, there are now three Bay Area counties in the yellow tier: Alameda, Marin, and San Mateo. San Francisco remains in the orange tier, but daily new cases are down 14% this week, and the percent-positivity of cases is down 0.3%, to 1.64%.

Napa has moved out of the red zone and in to the orange, along with the rest of the Bay Area.

Eight Bay Area counties — all but Solano — have agreed to a common set of criteria by which they will be allowed to drop most indoor mask mandates. These criteria include being in the CDC's yellow tier for three consecutive weeks, and having 80% or more of the total population vaccinated. Marin County looks to be the only county that's going to achieve these criteria in the coming weeks.

Last week, San Francisco dropped its mask mandate for workplaces where everyone is vaccinated, and also for gyms, college classes, and religious gatherings. The mandate for public transit, taxis, rideshares, and more come from the state, and those aren't likely to change soon. So, SF and other counties are just waiting for the ability to officially drop masks in bars, restaurants, and retail stores — which may not happen before January, though unofficially, most restaurants, bars, and clubs seem to be letting people go unmasked once inside.

While case counts have been dropping fairly steadily, signs of the next winter surge have been emerging in northern U.S. states as temperatures fall and people move more indoors. Cases have been ticking up in recent weeks across the country's northernmost states, including Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Idaho, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Some of these states, along with Alaska, have particularly low vaccination rates, but not all of them do. And experts believe this winter's surge will be far less extreme than last year's.

The CDC has just released a study focused on how one unvaccinated teacher infected with the Delta variant of COVID-19, in a mostly masked Marin County classroom, managed to infect half their students and seeded an outbreak that hit another classroom and students' families as well.

In a case that illustrates both how essential vaccine mandates are for schoolteachers and how contagious the Delta variant can be in an indoor classroom setting with unvaccinated students, the Marin outbreak holds lessons that should be learned nationwide.

The outbreak occurred in late May, as KRON 4 reports, before many of us understood how easily the Delta variant could be spread, and neither the school nor the city it's in were identified in the CDC report — however we know from Marin County health officials that a Delta variant outbreak occurred around that time at a school in Novato.

As the CDC explains, the unvaccinated teacher was infected sometime in mid-May 2021, and became symptomatic on May 19 with a stuffy nose and fatigue. The teacher was in the classroom with students from May 17 to May 21, and tested positive for COVID-19 on May 21. The teacher's subsequent symptoms included cough, fever, and headache.

Much like an early study out of China that illustrated how the airborne coronavirus spread in a restaurant, the CDC study provides a map of where the teacher's desk was located in relation to students' desk, and where each of the infected students sat. Students in the class, included many in the front two rows of the classroom, began showing symptoms on May 23 and 24, and subsequently tested positive. All told, 12 out of 24 students in the class were infected and tested positive, including several in the back rows of the class. The infection rate for the front two rows of the class was 80%.

These transmissions occurred despite students adhering to mask protocols, the presence of an air filter at the front of the class, six feet of distancing between desks, windows left open on both sides of the classroom, and the door of the classroom being kept open.

Students reported that the teacher was mostly masked, however the teacher removed their mask to read aloud to the class on multiple occasions.

"The school required teachers and students to mask while indoors; interviews with parents of infected students suggested that students’ adherence to masking and distancing guidelines in line with CDC recommendations was high in class," the report says.

Additionally, due to likely contacts at school as well as contacts with siblings at home, the infected students spread the virus to at least six other students in another classroom who were three years different in age from those in the original classroom. The two classrooms were separated by a large outdoor courtyard, and out of a class of 18, 14 students were tested, and six came back positive.

A lab was able to confirm that all of the cases were Delta variant cases, and that at least 11 of the virus samples taken were indistinguishable from each other, confirming that the infected teacher was likely responsible for all the subsequent cases.

The outbreak also spread to four siblings of four different students in the original classroom, as well as to three total parents of three different students in the original classroom.

The school reported that all of its teachers and staff were vaccinated at the time of the outbreak, save for this one teacher and one other.

The CDC noted that there appeared to be less community transmission from this outbreak than in other outbreaks the agency has studied, likely because of high overall vaccination in the community when this outbreak occurred. At the time of the outbreak, the CDC said the city in which it occurred had a 72% rate of vaccination.

At the time of this outbreak, another occurred in Marin County that was centered in San Anselmo and Fairfax. Health Officer Dr. Matt Willis said at the time, because both outbreaks lasted only two weeks and appeared to be stopped short by the vaccines, "This is what herd immunity looks like."

On Tuesday the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) updated its guidance on wearing face masks outdoors, and on the rules for the fully vaccinated — essentially endorsing what many of us have already been doing after our second shots.

Under new CDC guidance, fully vaccinated people no longer need to mask up when they're outdoors exercising with people in their household, or if they're walking down the street, and they no longer need to maintain the mask theater at outdoor restaurants. However, masks are still being recommended in all indoor spaces — and the CDC is still telling unvaccinated people to keep their masks on in most outdoor settings with other unvaccinated people.

Fully vaccinated people are encouraged to mask up in crowded outdoor settings, the CDC says, but they can go unmasked in small gatherings with other vaccinated people. Also, you're still considered unvaccinated until you're two weeks out from your second shot, or your one-shot of Johnson & Johnson.

Today's change does not mean that San Francisco is going to lift its outdoor mask mandate immediately — though we may hear more about this later in the day. At the moment, masks on sidewalks remain the polite thing to do, and there's a lot of self-policing going on and uneasiness in general until we know that more people are fully vaxxed. Many restaurants continue to ask patrons to mask up every time their (presumably vaccinated) servers approach a table, and that may not stop anytime soon as restaurant workers remain among the most exposed to strangers — and the vaccines are still not 100% effective at preventing infection.

But public health officials elsewhere in the nation are saying that today's a banner day, and perhaps the first of many in the long road back to normal.

"In the vast majority of outdoor scenarios, transmission risk is low," says UCSF physician-scientist Dr. Babak Javid, speaking to the Associated Press. "The key thing is to make sure people wear masks indoors," he says.

Mercedes Carnethon, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University, tells the AP that "the timing is right" for the CDC's change in guidance as more data points to the extremely low risk of outdoor transmission. And, she adds, "the additional freedoms may serve as a motivator" for reluctant people to go get their shots.

"It’s the return of freedom,” says University of Alabama at Birmingham infectious disease expert Dr. Mike Saag, speaking to the AP. "It’s the return of us being able to do normal activities again. We’re not there yet, but we’re on the exit ramp. And that’s a beautiful thing."

We'll update you if and when San Francisco changes its rules, or any other Bay Area counties — and if SF reaches the "Yellow" tier today.

Update: SF is not in the "Yellow" tier yet, but Gov. Gavin Newsom did issue a statement about the CDC announcement saying, "After reviewing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s masking recommendations, and with science and data as our guide, we are moving to align California’s guidance with these common-sense updates." This means that outdoor masking may not always be the rule when the state expects to broadly lift more restrictions on June 15 .

Photo: Darwin Bell

The trends continue in a positive direction for the Bay Area's COVID-19 cases. Hospitalizations and deaths continue to slow down considerably, and two more local counties are expected to hit the "Orange" tier tomorrow, with the final three to move out of the "Red" possibly next week. But at the national level, signs are pointing to another big surge in cases — and California certainly isn't out of the woods yet.

Alameda and Napa counties are both expected to advance to the "Orange" tier for reopening on Tuesday, joining San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Marin counties in the second-least restrictive tier. That leaves only three more Bay Area counties — Contra Costa, Solano, and Sonoma — in the "Red" for likely a week longer.

Sonoma and Contra Costa counties were the last to reach the "Red" tier on Sunday March 14, which means the earliest they'd be eligible to advance again would be three weeks later, or Easter Sunday (April 4) — and that announcement could come later this week.

San Francisco, meanwhile, turned "Orange" in the state's metrics on the morning of March 24, and with numbers that already appear to qualify it for the "Yellow" tier, that change may occur as early as April 14.

Infectious disease experts continue to warn, however, against unrestricted indoor activities like dining or movie-going without masks on at all times — with about 40% of the Bay Area now fully or partially vaccinated, and with highly infectious variants proliferating in other parts of the country, it could only be a matter of time before we see new outbreaks or upticks in cases in California. Some experts even argue that plane travel is safer than indoor dining, and states are being too cavalier in allowing businesses to reopen indoors as vaccinations rates rise.

"No one should be dining indoors, vaccinated or not, right now,” as UC Berkeley infectious disease expert John Swartzberg, told the Chronicle last week. "Spending a prolonged period of time indoors with a bunch of strangers with everyone talking loudly is a perfect way to spread this virus."

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Rochelle Walensky, gave a dire press briefing on Monday about the uptick in COVID cases that occurred at the national level last week.

"When I first started at CDC about two months ago I made a promise to you: I would tell you the truth even if it was not the news we wanted to hear. Now is one of those times when I have to share the truth, and I have to hope and trust you will listen," Walensky said, per CNBC.

"I’m going to pause here, I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope, but right now I’m scared," she said.

The country saw an average of 63,239 new cases per day last week, a 16% uptick over the week prior. And Dr. Walensky warns that such upticks have, in the past year, portended exponential surges shortly thereafter. She said that the trajectory of infections in the U.S. looks all too similar to what Germany, Italy, and France saw just a few weeks ago, and those three countries are experiencing significant surges right now.

"I’m speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director and not only as your CDC director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer," Dr. Walensky said, likely aiming her comments at states and cities where everyone has largely let their guard down and taken off their masks, and where the biggest spikes in COVID cases are being seen.

As the New York Times reported Sunday, Florida is averaging 5,000 new cases per day, an 8% jump over two weeks prior. And the UK variant is proliferating quickly there, especially among young people.

While only a small percentage of virus testing samples are being genetically sequenced to see if they represent new variant cases, the three main variants worrying experts remain in limited numbers so far around the Bay Area. As of late last week, officials had confirmed 19 cases of the UK variant, also known as B.1.1.7, in Santa Clara County, along with two cases of the South African variant, and one case of the immune-resistant Brazilian variant known as P.1.

The nine-county Bay Area is currently seeing a seven-day average of 369 new cases per day, down from an average of 589 new cases per day in the first week of March.

Open season for vaccine eligibility in California begins in two weeks, on April 15, with those age 50 and up eligible starting on Thursday.

And in good pandemic-related news, the CDC just released results from a real-world study of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines among Americans at high risk of COVID exposure, including frontline healthcare workers. In the study, fully vaccinated people were 90% protected from infection, and those with only one shot were 80% protected. And the results suggest that the vaccines prevent infection from the currently spreading variants, and prevent asymptomatic spread of the virus as well.

Experts are increasingly acknowledging that the rapid global spread of the coronavirus is due to how easily it's transmitted by those who show no symptoms — and that it can be aerosolized and spread through exhaling and face-to-face talking.

Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Robert Redfield just gave an interview to NPR in which he says that as U.S. researchers learn more about the novel coronavirus, they're concluding that it is likely about three times more infectious than the flu.

"One of the [pieces of] information that we have pretty much confirmed now is that a significant number of individuals that are infected actually remain asymptomatic," Redfield said. "That may be as many as 25 percent. That's important, because now you have individuals that may not have any symptoms that can contribute to transmission, and we have learned that in fact they do contribute to transmission."

So, while the World Health Organization has claimed the virus is not airborne (aerosolized) in microscopic particles, U.S. experts are starting to contradict that — because asymptomatic people who are not coughing or sneezing are not simply spitting in people's faces to transmit the virus. It can — as the case of the choir in Washington State strongly suggests — be transmitted through exhaling or being in an enclosed space with an asymptomatic but infected person.

Consequently, the CDC is likely soon to announce that more people should be wearing masks of some kind in public spaces, and Redfield says that such guidelines are now being "critically re-reviewed."

As Dr. Benjamin Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, tells the New York Times today, masks of some kind are probably always advisable in public, and the insistence from the W.H.O that the virus is only spread on droplets is wrong. "The W.H.O. has been saying aerosol transmission doesn’t occur, which is... perplexing,” he says. Though he cautions people from being overly paranoid about passing someone in a store or on a sidewalk. "If you have a passing contact with an infectious person, you would have a very, very low chance of transmission occurring," Cowling says.

Dr. Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious disease expert at Columbia University, also cautions people in the fluidity of the definition of "asymptomatic." As he tells the Times, "There’s no standard definition for it, and you could say to yourself, Well, that’s kind of ridiculous: You either have symptoms or you don’t." The problem comes in the variability among people to be sensitive to certain symptoms — to notice when they have a passing fever for instance, or when a cough is attributable to seasonal allergies or smoking, or something new. And this virus is so new, it's still difficult to say how many cases being deemed "asymptomatic" are simply mild cases in which the incubation period was especially long.

In the end, Shaman says, what's important to understand is that "there are people out there shedding the virus who don’t know that they’re infected."

The CDC is hypothesizing for now that, like other respiratory viruses like the flu, there will be a seasonality to this one and its rate of transmission. Dr. Redfield suggests that this will allow them to do more study in areas of the country where transmission rates remain very low.

As he told NPR:

As you know, there's a number of states right now that have limited transmission, and so getting back into those states with the public health community for early case definition, isolation, contact tracing, I think this is what we're going to be doing very aggressively May, June, July — to try to use those standard public health techniques to limit the ability to have wide-scale community transmission as we get prepared, most likely, for another wave that we would anticipate in the late fall, early winter where there will still be a substantial portion of Americans that are susceptible.

Hopefully, we'll aggressively reembrace some of the mitigation strategies that we have determined had impact, particularly social distancing.

As Dr. Robert M. Wachter, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF, writes in an opinion column in USA Today, the Bay Area's early and stringent orders for social distancing appear to be paying off — and with so many potentially infectious people with no symptoms, this is the only strategy that can work.

He cites, in particular, the rates of hospitalization and death in New York versus San Francisco, which can not be explained simply by saying New York is testing more people and has a far larger population.

As recently as March 10, the rates of confirmed coronavirus infection in New York City and San Francisco were roughly the same: New York City had seven cases and San Francisco had 14. On Monday evening, New York City had more than 38,000 confirmed cases and 914 deaths; San Francisco had over 374 cases and six deaths.

Some commentators, noting the sharply divergent growth curves in New York and San Francisco, have wondered whether the differences relate to testing, which has been more readily available in New York than in California. Testing might explain a small part of the difference in the sheer number of cases reported (that is, assuming patients with relatively mild symptoms are more likely to be tested in New York than in San Francisco). But it wouldn’t explain the profound differences we’re seeing in hospitalization and death rates. Anyone sick enough to be in a hospital would be tested in both locations.

Photo: Kora Manheimer/SFist

Beware, all beardy bros and hirsute daddies! An odd but relevant CDC guide has been making the rounds as the agency prepares the nation for deep coronavirus pandemic panic, and it says your beards have to go.

The guide to "Facial Hairstyles and Filtering Facepiece Respirators" which you can see below shows how most forms of full beards, goatees, "chin curtains," "French forks" and mutton chops are not advised in the event that you want to wear a filtering face mask or respirator. Why? Because your facial hair interrupts whatever seal the mask is meant to form around your face, allowing virus-carrying particulates to enter. Therefore, only clean shaven men, or those with small mustaches and soul patches, can properly wear a face mask, while others are leaving space for contaminants and disease to enter through their beards.

As KPIX notes after picking up this story, this beard guide from the CDC is not new — it was actually created in 2017. But it resurfaced because of fears that we'll all be wearing N95 face masks soon, even though the CDC is currently only recommending the masks for healthcare professionals dealing with infected patients.

But over in the UK, fears are mounting and at least one health organization sent around the CDC facial hair guide this week as a precaution. Per the Washington Post, the University Hospital Southampton National Health Service Foundation Trust sent the beard warning out via email to all employees.

"I recognise for some this is a big ask, that beards are so popular at present," said Derek Sandeman, medical director of the trust, in the email. "However I do believe this is the right thing to do."

If nothing else, the guide is handy for describing beards and mustaches that you may not have known all had names. Who knew that that beard was called a "Garibaldi"? Or that a Hitler 'stache was called a "Toothbrush"? And everybody please stop with the chin curtains.

Photo: Jakob Owens

The City of Costa Mesa, like the coronavirus itself, has done something novel: issued a restraining order against COVID-19 infectees from entering the SoCal metropolis.

Reported by The New York Times, it was unveiled that about 50 patients aboard the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan — who were later transferred to NorCal's Travis Air Force Base — were bound for an almost empty mental health hospital in Costa Mesa, until the mayor and various council members secured their borders by issuing a restraining order against “an influx of coronavirus patients.” This past Friday, U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton granted the city's aforementioned emergency restraining order request, raising a new ethical question: Should a city bar coronavirus patients from seeking treatment in order to safeguard their communities?

Regardless, this isn’t the first time such a forced exile has been pushed to thwart the spread of a disease. The New York Times reminded its readership that the towns in the American South protected themselves against yellow fever in the 19th century by refusing to allow transients to come enter. A similar quarantine happened during the rise of Spanish Flu in 1918 when various areas across the country shut down transportation and set up quarantines to keep out people who showed symptoms of the influenza strain.

Fast-forward some hundred years, and Costa Mesa’s enforced sequestration has garnered praise from politicians.

"I applaud the County, my colleagues and the City of Costa Mesa for trying to block the use of local facilities to house infected individuals, [because] while we want to treat those infected humanely, we must also protect the public's health," Orange County Supervisor Donald P. Wagner said to Patch. "It does no good to spread this contagious virus around in uninfected locales; we must act intelligently to prevent a senseless outbreak locally."

Support of the decision, too, came from the Costa Mesa residents that packed the courtroom yesterday for another hearing on the situation, where local officials said that patients infected with coronavirus should not be brought for treatment to the city's near-defunct mental health intuition, The Fairview Developmental Center; only two people are currently being treated the facility for mental health illnesses, with almost all the staff having left the medical campus.

Katrina Foley, Costa Mesa’s mayor — who spearheaded the initiated after local experts warned the virus could “spread through the air vents” at the almost vacant facility — also believes this protective measure is, per her words, movie-worthy.

"[This situation is]  right out of a movie," she wrote in a letter to constituents late Saturday. "Some even believed it was a hoax at first, but sadly, it's not.”

She pens more in her note, calling out the State’s irrational action to move these patients to a populous area: “Who would believe that a federal agency could decide to transfer persons infected with the contagious coronavirus into Costa Mesa, right in the heart of our residential densely populated community?”

To Foley’s point, it appears that Costa Mesa wasn’t even involved in the process of the State deciding to designate The Fairview Developmental Center as a treatment facility for COVID-19.

“The city has not been part of any of the processes that led to the consideration of the site, and it would be unfair to not include us in this kind of significant decision that has a great impact on our community,” Mayor Katrina Foley told the Orange County Register.

It goes without question that this recent coronavirus containment update is an “aggressive approach” to safeguarding the masses, but it also brings to the forefront an ethical conundrum as to what’s best for those contaminated with the coronavirus — and for those who are in danger of becoming infected.

Judge Josephine L. Staton’s restraining order stands as-is till March 2nd when she will then reconsider the issue after both state and federal authorities present further details about how each plans to protect the Costa Mesa community, as well as those afflicted with coronavirus.

This news comes days after it was revealed the current White House’s recent budget called for a 10 percent cut in the Center for Disease Control (CDC) funding. To add insult to injury, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command back in 2018 — leaving us fairly “incompetent” to handle a like-situation on our soils.

Related: Gilead Sciences Stock Jumps After World Health Comments On Its Coronavirus Drug

Two More Coronavirus Cases Confirmed in NorCal, Plus One More Suspected

Local Hospitals Prepare for Coronavirus Patients; Richmond Lab Begins Testing

Image: Wikimedia Commons

A pregnant Napa woman has tested positive for the Zika virus. KQED reports that the Napa County Public Health Division and the California Department of Public Health confirmed the case to the public, revealing that the woman, whose name has not been released, traveled to Central America within the last three months. She is not showing signs of Zika infection at the moment.

Dr. Karen Relucio, Napa County health officer, reminds the California public in a statement that, “This Zika virus case is not a threat to public health. There is no active transmission of Zika virus in Napa County, and the two kinds of mosquitos that transmit the virus have not been found here.”

Public health officials in California, as the Chronicle makes mention, have confirmed that six state residents tested positive for the virus, the first, according to KQED, from Yolo County.

The Zika virus, declared by the World Health Organization an international public health emergency as of February 1, has occupied news briefs and airwaves for some time now as it spreads mostly through Latin America and the Caribbean. It was first confirmed in Brazil in May 2015.

Zika is a mild illness, relatively speaking, but it appears to put women who are pregnant at risk of giving birth to babies with small heads, a birth defect called microcephaly. “Anyone who is planning to travel to a country with active Zika virus transmission should consult with their health care provider before leaving, especially if they are pregnant or are considering becoming pregnant,” Relucio counseled.

Previously: Zika Virus Declared International Emergency By W.H.O., Detected In California

It's the time of year when you can't go to the grocery store, drug store, or even Target without someone nagging you to get your annual flu shot. But this year, doctors are warning that this year's flu shot might not protect you against the bugs we're presently seeing across the country.

Here's a grossly simplified explanation of how the flu shot sausage gets made: every February, a "panel of experts" looks at data on which common flu strains are presently circulating, and uses that data to predict what three to four flu strains will be hot and cool and in and now when flu season rolls around that fall.

Some years, the prediction is more accurate than others. Last year, the vaccine was 50 to 55 percent effective, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, which is considered a good outcome.

But this year we might not be so lucky. According to an alert issued by the CDC on Wednesday, 52% of the 85 influenza virus samples they've collected and analyzed this winter have been different than the virus strains that were included in this year’s vaccine, suggesting to them that the strain has mutated since the February pow-wow.

The problem strain is the influenza A (H3N2) one. That's the flu that was expected to be the biggest one this year, and, sure enough, it's the most commonly reported flu so far this year. According to CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden, though, they're now seeing a new, mutated version of H3N2: "not something that’s been around before,” he told the Associated Press.

When faced with a mutant virus, the vaccine might decrease the severity of the illness (if contracted), but is unlikely to offer complete protection, the CDC says. Therefore, “though we cannot predict what will happen the rest of this flu season, it’s possible we may have a season that’s more severe than most,” CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a statement.

All that aside, the CDC is still urging you to get the flu shot, as some protection is better than none. On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, and the CDC says that a very high percentage of those who die weren't vaccinated.

But with a weaker shot than in years past, the CDC is telling doctors not to mess around with the infected. Children younger than 2, adults 65 and older, and people with asthma, heart disease, weakened immune systems or certain other chronic conditions are at higher risk, and should head to the doctor immediately if they start showing flu symptoms, even if they got the shot.

So, even though we just told you how your flu shot might not work, based on the CDC's assessment we're still going to leave you with the San Francisco Department of Public Health's list of where to get immunized. You can also read the CDC's alert about this year's mutant strain here, and read all their flu info here.

According to health care futurist Wanda Jones, head of the San Francisco-based New Century Healthcare Institute, "no one expects a flood of Ebola patients in the United States." But with the news that the US's first Ebola patient died this morning, it's reasonable to assume that we'll continue to see cases of the deadly disease — and Jones has some recommendations on what cities should do to ensure the illness doesn't spread.

Thomas Eric Duncan reportedly contracted Ebola in Liberia, then traveled to the US, He died of the disease this morning at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, CNN reports. The 42-year-old Liberian national had been diagnosed in mid-September, and had been in critical condition for the last few weeks, before succumbing early Wednesday.

Though it's still unclear if Duncan passed the disease on to anyone else the CDC says that Ebola transmission is through

• blood or body fluids (including but not limited to urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, breast milk, and semen) of a person who is sick with or has died from Ebola


• objects (like needles and syringes) that have been contaminated with the virus


• infected animals

According to the CDC, Ebola is not spread through the air, by water, or by food (notwithstanding the consumption of infected animals, which you should not do). Outbreaks can spread rapidly in close quarters and urban environments, which is why Jones tells the San Francisco Business Times that the following strict policies should be put in place, should the number of US infections grow:

• Create "safe residences" where people can be isolated for 21 days until it's clear they have no symptoms.
• Quarantine patients so that family members and others don't come into contact with them.
• Identify safe ways to dispose of contaminated clothing and bed clothing from infected patients and their care givers.
• Take temperatures of patients before they enter ERs, so they can be isolated before sitting in emergency department waiting rooms.
• Select "dedicated" mortuaries where safe procedures are followed for embalming, burying or cremating victims of the disease.
• Pursue a strong (or stronger) screening process at African airports to prevent infected patients from boarding.
• Make public health warnings concerning the risk of traveling to affected countries, and keep a close watch of other nations in Africa, the Middle East and Europe that could become the next centers of the outbreak, already by far the worst ever.
• Institute a public health quarantine of returning U.S. military personnel returning from infrastructure work in West Africa, including building field hospitals for treatment of Ebola patients.

At present, none of these recommendations are officially in effect in any US cities, though CNN reports that "airports in the United States will begin taking the temperatures of arriving passengers who have flight itineraries originating from West African countries where Ebola is concentrated," as of this weekend or next week.

Outside the US, there have been (at publication time) eight confirmed cases of Ebola in European countries. As of October 3, the CDC reports that there are 7492 total cases of Ebola in West Africa's 2014 outbreak, 3439 of which have resulted in deaths.

When you think about rabid animals infecting dogs, you probably think of Old Yeller (bitten by a rabid wolf) or Cujo (bat bite). But now Northern California dog guardians are being warned of a new menace, the rabid skunk.

According to El Dorado County Animal Control spokesperson Jennifer Hamburg, statewide drought conditions have sent rabid skunks out of the woods they normally stick to, and into more populated Northern California areas.

“They are charging after people’s dogs,” Hamburg told KPIX, saying that in past years, she's only seen five to seven rabid skunks the entire year. However, this year she says seven have been reported in the last three months alone. That makes 2014 a possible banner year for the ailing beasts, who are heading into cities in search of food and water.

Rabies is almost always fatal to humans or animals that are infected, but swift treatment following exposure can drastically minimize the chances that they'll fall ill. It's important that all pets that go outside be vaccinated for rabies (all Pet Food Express locations offer low-cost, walk-in vaccinations for your dog or cat), but even then if your pet is exposed, you should take them to the vet immediately.

According to the CDC, rabies symptoms in animals include "lethargy, fever, vomiting, anorexia, cerebral dysfunction, cranial nerve dysfunction, ataxia, weakness, paralysis, seizures, difficulty breathing, difficulty swallowing, excessive salivation, abnormal behavior, aggression, and/or self-mutilation," so if you see any animals demonstrating those traits, steer clear.

If you're exposed, you should also seek medical attention straight away. While human fatalities due to rabies are rare, those who do contract the illness do so because they didn't realize they were exposed.

[KPIX]
[CDC]