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California Healthline Original Stories

News Of The Day

Good morning! Here are some of your top California health stories of the day.

Second Evacuee Tests Positive For Coronavirus In San Diego: The patient was among 232 individuals placed under quarantine at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar after being airlifted from the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan earlier this month, CDC spokeswoman Ana Toro said. A previous case of coronavirus was documented on Monday among the same group of evacuees, the CDC said. CDC officials said it appeared the two San Diego patients were separately exposed to the virus in China. The two arrived at Miramar on different planes and were housed in separate facilities on base. They have since been hospitalized. To date, a total of eight coronavirus cases have been documented in California,none of them fatal. Read more from Paul Sisson of the San Diego Union-Tribune and Steve Gorman of Reuters.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles County public health nurses are closely monitoring all residents who have recently traveled to mainland China, regardless of whether they have any symptoms of the new strain of coronavirus, according to the county's top health official. More than 1,000 people have been assigned a public health nurse and asked to self-isolate and not to go to work or school for 14 days, Department of Public Health director Barbara Ferrer told the Board of Supervisors on Monday. Read more from the City News Service.

In related news from The Mercury News: Five San Jose Hospital Workers Exposed To Coronavirus Patient Return To Job, As Infections In U.S. Rise To 14

Doctors Have Blocked Attempts To Give Nurse Practitioners More Authority. But With A Shortage Looming, Advocates Are Hopeful: As California faces a growing shortage of primary care physicians, the Legislature is considering what backers believe could be a partial solution: allowing nurse practitioners who get additional training and certification to work independently. With that additional authority, they could treat patients without a "practice agreement" from a supervising physician outlining what they can do. It also would allow some nurse practitioners to open their own clinics without a doctor overseeing them. If it does so, California would join 22 other states and the Veterans Administration. Researchers for the Bay Area Council Economic Institute have found it would also save the state millions of dollars a year. But California's powerful doctors' lobby has fought the idea since it was first proposed five years ago — saying that expanding the role of nurse practitioners would dilute the quality of medical care patients receive, and create a two-tiered system of treatment. Read more from Elizabeth Aguilera of CalMatters.

Below, check out the full round-up of California Healthline original stories, state coverage and the best of the rest of the national news for the day.

More News From Across The State

Monsanto

San Francisco Chronicle: Monsanto Cancer Case Pits Federal Product Label Against California Law
As Monsanto challenged a $78.5 million damage award to a Bay Area groundskeeper who was stricken with cancer after spraying the company's herbicide, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra stepped into the case Wednesday, telling a state appeals court that the verdict was validly based on state laws requiring warning labels for cancer-causing chemicals. The 2018 verdict was the first of three, all in the tens of millions of dollars, in Bay Area trials of suits by users of the glyphosate herbicide, widely sold as Roundup, who were later diagnosed with cancer. (Egelko, 2/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Bayer Strives To End Lawsuits Over Roundup—While Still Selling It
Bayer AG faces an extraordinary challenge as it tries to settle tens of thousands of claims that its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer: The product remains on the shelves, making it almost impossible to put the litigation to rest forever. Experts have said Bayer is in an unusual position compared with other companies that have faced multibillion-dollar lawsuits over their products. To end mass-tort litigation, other companies generally have discontinued or altered their products or added warning labels—all of which are problematic for the German pharmaceutical and agricultural company. (Kusisto, Bender and Bunge, 2/12)

Courts

Modesto Bee: Sacramento Judge Tosses Suit Alleging Sutter Privacy Breach
Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Christopher Krueger has dismissed a lawsuit against Sutter Health that had alleged the health-care giant was secretly sharing their medical information with Facebook, Google, Twitter and other third parties. In the legal filing, plaintiffs Jane Doe I and Jane Doe II asserted that Sutter "commandeers the web-browsers of patients and other users and causes personally identifiable data to be sent to third-parties, as well as the exact contents of communications exchanged" between Sutter and its patients. (Anderson, 2/12)

Mental Health

The California Health Report: California Agencies Failing To Regulate Mental Health Care Funding And Promptly Investigate Abuse In Nursing Homes, Auditor Finds
The California State Auditor condemned three government agencies in a recent report for failing to fix problems with health care programs that serve some of the state's most vulnerable residents. In a 61-page report, State Auditor Elaine Howle singled out California's Department of Health Care Services, the Department of Public Health, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as having significant problems with health care provision and oversight. These departments are responsible for the health and wellbeing of low-income residents, seniors in nursing homes and incarcerated people, respectively. (Boyd-Barrett, 2/10)

Public Health

Capital Public Radio: Measure U-Funded "Pop-Up" Program Strives To Lessen Teen Violence With Safe Spaces, Job Opportunities
These "community pop-ups", as organizers call them, offer low-income teens a place to spend time when they're not at school, often with access to mentors, job help and other resources. They're funded in part by $2.6 million from the Measure U sales tax, which voters approved to raise by a half cent in 2018. Mayor Darrell Steinberg argued for spending some of the money on job readiness programs for youth of color, and community groups pushed for more investment in Oak Park, Del Paso Heights, Meadowview and other low-income neighborhoods north and south of downtown. (Caiola, 2/12)

Vaping

Reuters: Juul Bought Ad Space On Kids' Websites, Including Cartoon Network - Lawsuit
E-cigarette maker Juul Labs Inc bought online advertisements on teen-focused websites for Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Seventeen magazine after it launched its product in 2015, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday by the Massachusetts attorney general's office. The allegations in the lawsuit, stemming from a more than year-long investigation, contradict repeated claims by Juul executives that the company never intentionally targeted teenagers, even as its products became enormously popular among high-school and middle-school students in recent years. (2/12)

Modesto Bee: Most Young Vape Users Say They Feel Safe Doing It: Study
Most young people who vape feel safe doing so, despite an outbreak of illnesses, a study found. The study, done by health data management firm Harmony Healthcare IT, surveyed 1,800 Americans between the ages of 18 and 38 who use vape products and found that the vast majority feel safe using them despite knowing they're unhealthy. As of Feb. 4, there were 2,758 cases of hospitalization or death due to vaping-related lung injuries in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Aldridge, 2/12)

Around California

Sacramento Bee: El Dorado County Fire Chief Quits To Save Firefighter's Job
An El Dorado County fire chief will step down to save the job of a firefighter who nearly died last summer on the same day local voters rejected a tax increase that would have kept him employed. Garden Valley Fire Protection District Chief Clive Savacool said Wednesday he's planning to step down as soon as possible in order to keep firefighter Scott Wager employed. However, two other firefighters with less seniority are certain to be laid off by this summer. The layoffs come after a September vote saw 54 percent of voters in the Garden Valley service area reject an assessment that would have levied an additional $71 to $182 annual fee on each parcel in the district. (Sabalow, 2/13)

Coronavirus

The New York Times: Coronavirus Cases Seemed To Be Leveling Off. Not Anymore.
The news seemed to be positive: The number of new coronavirus cases reported in China over the past week suggested that the outbreak might be slowing — that containment efforts were working. But on Thursday, officials added more than 14,840 new cases to the tally of the infected in Hubei Province alone, bringing the total number to 48,206, the largest one-day increase so far recorded. ... The sharp rise in reported cases illustrates how hard it has been for scientists to grasp the extent and severity of the coronavirus outbreak in China, particularly inside the epicenter, where thousands of sick people remain untested for the illness. (Rabin, 2/12)

The Wall Street Journal: The World Health Organization Draws Flak For Coronavirus Response
When the World Health Organization declared a global public-health emergency at the end of last month, it praised China's "extraordinary" efforts to combat the coronavirus epidemic and urged other countries not to restrict travel. "China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. Many governments ignored the travel advice. Other public-health experts criticized his unqualified praise for China. (Page and McKay, 2/12)

The New York Times: Coronavirus Test Kits Sent To States Are Flawed, C.D.C. Says
Some of the coronavirus testing kits sent to state laboratories around the country have flaws and do not work properly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday. The kits were meant to enable states to conduct their own testing and have results faster than they would by shipping samples to the C.D.C. in Atlanta. But the failure of the kits means that states that encountered problems with the test should not use it, and would still have to depend on the C.D.C.'s central lab, which could cause several days' delay in getting results. (Grady, 2/12)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Update: More Than 80 Percent Of Cases Are Mild, Complicating Efforts To Respond
But the virus's destructive potential has overshadowed one encouraging aspect of this outbreak: So far, about 82 percent of the cases — including all 14 in the United States — have been mild, with symptoms that require little or no medical intervention. And that proportion may be an undercount. ... "The fact that there are so many mild cases is a real hallmark of this disease and makes it so different from SARS," said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Health Security. "It's also really challenging. Most of our surveillance is oriented around finding people who require medical intervention." (Bernstein and Johnson, 2/12)

NPR: Is A Coronavirus Vaccine Coming Soon? Maybe By Fall, Scientists Say
Right now scientists are trying to accomplish something that was inconceivable a decade ago: create a vaccine against a previously unknown virus rapidly enough to help end an outbreak of that virus. In this case, they're trying to stop the spread of the new coronavirus that has already infected tens of thousands of people, mainly in China, and given rise to a respiratory condition now known as COVID-19. Typically, making a new vaccine takes a decade or longer. But new genetic technologies and new strategies make researchers optimistic that they can shorten that timetable to months, and possibly weeks — and have a tool by the fall that can slow the spread of infection. (Palca, 2/12)

National Roundup

Reuters: Democrat Sanders, Nevada Union In Escalating Feud Ahead Of State Nominating Contest
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who bills himself as a champion of organized labor, found himself in an escalating feud with Nevada's Culinary Workers Union on Wednesday, 10 days before the state holds the party's third nominating contest. Tensions have been simmering for months between the powerful 60,000-member union and the 77-year-old U.S. senator, who comes to Nevada after a strong showing in Iowa and victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday. The union, which criticized Sanders' universal healthcare plan in a flyer to its members on Tuesday, said on Wednesday his supporters responded by "viciously" attacking the organization via Twitter, text, voicemails and direct messaging. (2/12)

Reuters: Privacy Law Covering Most Medical Care May Not Apply In Schools
The privacy protections Americans have come to expect when it comes to their medical information may not always apply in school settings, a new report suggests. When a school nurse is involved in a student's medical care, information on that care may end up in the child's educational record - which is accessible without consent to school officials and parents, according to the report in Pediatrics. (2/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Advances In Health Care, Technology Open New Job Prospects For The Disabled
When Virginia Jacko began losing her eyesight in her 40s, she left her job as a senior financial executive at a university and enrolled in a vocational-rehabilitation program. Using new technology, she was soon able to use a spreadsheet, read a financial statement and even pick out matching clothes. Fifteen years later, she is chief executive of the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind, which runs the program. Ms. Jacko's experience shows how advances in technology and health care, as well as changes in the labor market, have created new work opportunities for disabled and older workers. People are living longer, healthier lives. Automation has made many tasks at work easier. (Davidson, 2/13)