San Francisco County has the highest COVID-19 case rate of any other county in California with a seven-day average of 13 cases per 100,000 residents, state data showed on Tuesday. By comparison, Los Angeles is reporting 5 cases per 100,000 residents. And San Francisco isn’t the only Bay Area spot sitting at the top of the list. All counties in the region except Solano have among the highest rates in the state.

But multiple experts say this news isn’t alarming, and does not warrant any policy changes. Despite the region’s ranking, cases are extremely low compared to what they were amid the winter surge when the city’s seven-day average soared above 250 cases per 100,000 at the peak.

“No I’m not concerned,” said Dr. George Rutherford, director of UCSF’s Prevention and Public Health Group. “I don’t think it’s any reason to go back to putting the brakes on and our masks back on. We have lots of hospital capacity.”

“I am not too concerned as our hospitals remain eerily quiet — only 2 patients with COVID hospitalized today at the main UCSF Health hospital on Parnassus, compared to close to a 100 in this hospital on January 25,” UCSF infectious diseases expert Dr. Peter Chin-Hong wrote in an email.

“I don’t anticipate any lockdowns, and I am not even sure any restrictions will be re-implemented as long as our hospitals remain protected.” Chin Hong continued. “There may be disruptions in the community in the workplace and schools as people need to be taken out to isolate for at least 5 days if infected. Is it interesting that countries like the UK, Denmark and South Africa have removed the mandate for a compulsory Isolation when infected and this softens the potential disruptions to life in this way.”

While San Francisco’s case rate may not be concerning, you may still be wondering why it’s higher than other places. UCSF’s Dr. Monica Gandhi believes a primary reason is the city’s robust testing apparatus.

“We do a lot of testing in San Francisco with mass community testing sites established via a collaboration between UCSF and the San Francisco Department of Public Health,” Gandhi said. “This allows us to detect slight increases in cases better than other counties in the setting of BA.2 (now 72% of strains in the US) and with increased movement of the population.”

Rutherford agreed that testing is playing into the city’s higher rate and added that the city is a medical hub and people are coming to the city for care that requires testing. “Theoretically, positive tests should be reported back to the county of residence, but that might not always be happening,” he said.

The highly transmissible BA.2 variant — that’s spreading at a time when more people are traveling and society is reopening — is another likely factor, said Chin-Hong.

“A combination of spring break travel, visitors from lots of other parts of the country and world (Asia, Europe), reopening and the resumption of large indoor events like sports and concerts,” Chin-Hong wrote in an email. “This is all fueled by BA.2, which is more transmissible in a city that is compact. There may be more susceptible people to infection in San Francisco and the Bay Area (compared to other parts of the state) who haven’t gotten Breakthrough infection with BA.1 and whose immunity to infection has waned. Strategies that have been used in the past to avoid infection may not work quite as well with COVID.”

Could the Bay Area be at the start of a BA.2-driven surge?

The experts that SFGATE talked to all said they don’t expect cases to skyrocket.

“There’s going to be some sort of a sawtooth pattern and it’s not surprising that things are going to be up and down,” said Rutherford. “We’ll see some clusters and bumps from BA2, but I think the overall pattern is it’s going to broaden the base of that curve as it comes down.”

Chin-Hong emphasized that the region has high vaccination rates and this combined with immunity people infected with COVID gained during the original omicron surge “will provide enough immunity ammunition to protect people from getting seriously ill and so protect our hospital resources so we can continue to take care of the spectrum of non-COVID illnesses without interruption.”

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Monday night though, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was on the offensive. He was the feature speaker at a town hall meeting at Manny’s in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Boudin addressed a crowd of nearly 200 San Franciscans as his recall election on June 7 is now less than three months away.

“I’m proud of the fact that in my two years in office we’ve increased our charging rate for sexual assault, we’ve increased our conviction rate for homicide cases, and we filed more than 10,000 new criminal cases,” said Boudin .

VIDEO: Bay Area DA’s meet with crime survivors to find solutions, better ways to support victims

The crowd inside at Manny’s was there to ask Boudin questions, but a pro-recall crowd of two dozen people were outside, making it known they aren’t happy with the district attorney. In fact we even saw drama between someone appearing to be a Boudin supporter, and another person in favor of the recall.

“This DA, his policies have failed!” said a recall supporter.

“How do you know if his policies have failed? If he hasn’t had a chance to do that and the police have been sabotaging him!” said a Boudin supporter.

“I haven’t really had a chance to govern properly. I’m not making excuses, I’m just stating facts here but I took office in January 2020, less than two months later I was told by the Department of Public Health that I and my staff couldn’t go into our office,” said Boudin.

RELATED: Anger among San Francisco’s Asian American voters may influence DA Boudin recall, report says

But over the course of the last two year’s San Franciscans have seen vehicle theft property crimes continue to plague the city and thefts continue to hurt businesses.

Boudin though refusing to answer our questions about that as he left Monday’s town hall.

“I’m really late for another event. Happy to talk about it, really late for another event,” said the district attorney as he walked away from our camera.

Homelessness was a main focus at the town hall along with diversion programs instead of incarceration in certain cases. Boudin making reference to a successful program in Eugene, Oregon where social workers respond to calls instead of police.

“I think if we’re serious about reducing violence, reducing the police clearance rate, about building public safety, then we’ve got to invest in programs like that one,” said Boudin.

Copyright © 2022 KGO-TV. All rights reserved.

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The president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve on Wednesday said the central bank is likely to raise a key interest rate to as high as 2.5% by year end in a bid to help douse raging US inflation.

“I see an expeditious march to neutral by the end of the year as a prudent path,” Mary Daly said in a speech at the University of Las Vegas.

Her remarks suggest the Fed would raise rates at least a few times in half-point increments, perhaps as soon as the central bank’s May strategy meeting.

The central bank views 2.5% as neutral for its short-term fed funds rate, meaning it neither helps nor hurts the economy. The cost of borrowing for a house, car or business loan are influenced by the Fed’s benchmark rate.

The Fed last month lifted its short-term rate for the first time since the pandemic after keeping it near zero during the crisis in an effort to stimulate the economy.

While the Fed’s actions helped shield the US from an even deeper recession, its easy-money strategy also contributed to the worst bout of inflation in 40 years. The cost of living jumped 8.5% as the 12 months ended in February, the consumer price index shows.

A sharp recovery and the return of millions of people to work, however, means the Fed no longer has to support the economy, Daly said. “Moving purposefully to a more neutral stance that does not stimulate the economy is the top priority.”

Daly and other senior Fed officials have signaled they plan to raise rates quickly to try to ease upward price pressures and assure Wall Street DJIA, +0.67% investors and the public that the central bank won’t let inflation continue to run rampant.

“Across the country, Americans are waking up and going to bed worried about whether their incomes will keep up with the rising cost of rent, food, and fuel,” she said.

“Businesses are also worried, thinking twice about committing to long-term
contracts that may become too costly to fulfill if prices continue to rise.”

Yet Daly, viewed as one of the Fed’s more dovish officials, also cautioned that the central bank has to make sure it doesn’t go too far too fast.

“If we slam the brakes on the economy by adjusting rates too quickly or too much, we risk forcing unnecessary adjustments by businesses and households, potentially tipping the economy into recession,” she warned.

By early next year, the Fed will be able to gauge the effects of higher rates, she said. and adjust as necessary. She blamed most of the increase in inflation on disruptions caused by the coronavirus that she expects to fade in time.

More recently, she noted, the war in Ukraine has added to inflationary pressures by pushing up prices of oil and grains such as wheat.

“All of this means that it’s hard to fully know what next year will look like,” she said.

Still, Daly insisted that inflation would eventually subside and return close to the Fed’s 2% target within the next few years.

“I have it at 2%,” she said. “That’s where I think it’s going.”

Daly is not a voting member this year of the Fed’s interest-rate setting panel known as the Federal Open Market Committee.

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Having inched down to just under 20 percent at the end of last year, the effective office vacancy rate in San Francisco ticked back up to a pandemic high of 21.7 percent in the first quarter of 2022, representing 18.7 million square feet of vacant office space in the city, including 5.3 million square feet of space which is technically leased but sitting vacant and 13.4 million square feet of un-leased space, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield.

As a point of comparison, there was under 5 million square feet of vacant office space in San Francisco prior to the pandemic with a vacancy rate of 5.7 percent, versus a long-term average of around 12 percent. And as we outlined last quarter, foreshadowing the first quarter rise:

“Despite the drop in the overall vacancy rate at the end of 2021, the amount of un-leased office space in San Francisco actually ticked up, both in the absolute and relatively, with 1.3 million square feet of space that was being offered for sublet in the third quarter having been leased, reoccupied or returned to the market as directly vacant space. And total leasing activity actually dropped from the third to fourth quarter of last year, with “a scarcity of large transactions,” a push back of return to office dates (yes, the surge in COVID cases is meaningful, beyond increasing hospitalizations and deaths) , and under 1 million square feet of space having been leased, including sublets, for a negative net absorption.”

And in terms of active demand for the 18.7 million square feet of vacant space, Cushman & Wakefield is currently tracking active requirements for 4.9 million square feet, which was down from the fourth quarter of last year and 33.8 percent below the pre-pandemic demand.

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San Francisco now has the third-highest coronavirus transmission rate in California, with a daily average case rate of about 104 per 100,000 residents.

The county recorded a seven-day average of 896 cases per day on Dec. 30, the most recent available data. That is more than double the previous peak of 388 cases, a seven-day average recorded on Jan. 12 last year.

At least one Bay Area county, Napa, is out of available intensive care beds as the virus once again tightens its hold on the region.

San Francisco’s transmission rate ranks in California behind only Los Angeles County, with 118 cases per 100,000 residents — the highest reported there since the start of the pandemic — and Mono County with 109 per 100,000. Across California, the seven-day average is 75 cases per 100,000, and in the Bay Area, it is 63 cases.

San Francisco officials said infections among staff members are starting to affect city departments. The Municipal Transportation Agency said Monday in a memo obtained by The Chronicle that it is implementing COVID protocols at its offices on South Van Ness Avenue after an outbreak involving several staff members.

COVID-19 hospitalizations in the Bay Area also hit their highest number since mid-September over the weekend.

Coronavirus Resources

COVID-19 map: Data on trends in the Bay Area and across California

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Data analyzed by The Chronicle shows 746 Bay Area hospital patients testing positive with the coronavirus as of Sunday — a figure not seen since the tail end of the summer delta surge. Of those patients, 149 were in intensive care unit beds — a 50% jump since Christmas.

That is already putting stress on some hospital systems in the region. Napa County has no ICU beds currently available, said Leah Greenbaum, the county’s emergency services coordinator.

“The current surge is driving more patients to the health care system, and it is also impacting staff,” she said. “When staff become infected with COVID-19, they cannot come into work and care for patients, which can cause significant strain on the health care system.”

The number of hospitalizations in the Bay Area, a lagging indicator of pandemic trends, has risen sharply since mid-November with the spread of the omicron variant and the persistence of the delta variant, and it shows no sign of abating.

Bay Area health officials expect the number to continue to surge as people return to work and school after traveling and gathering over the winter break, with students at most Bay Area schools returning from holiday on Monday.

“The combination of the omicron variant being highly transmissible and holiday gatherings are contributing to the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in Solano County, in California, and across the nation,” said Jayleen Richards, public health administrator for Solano County.

Home kits to test for coronavirus infection are ready to be handed out by Alameda County health officials to families at Canyon Middle School in Castro Valley ahead of students’ return from winter break.

Bronte Wittpenn/The Chronicle

By comparison to San Francisco’s reported daily average of 104 new cases per 100,000 residents, Marin County reported about 80 cases per 100,000 people as of Dec. 30, with San Mateo County at about 68, Napa at 66, Sonoma at 59, Contra Costa at 58, Santa Clara at 57, Alameda at 55 and Solano at 43.

“We are seeing a rapid increase in cases in Napa County,” said Greenbaum. “We have exceeded the peak of the delta surge, and we have nearly as many cases as we did during the winter surge last year.”

Schools in Napa County will not reopen for another week, she added, “but we know many residents resumed more traditional holiday gathering and travel plans this year.”

The good news within the escalating figures is that the number of hospitalizations remains well below what it was a year ago, with a peak of 2,210 on Jan. 10, when vaccines were still just emerging. Some health officials warned, however, that a continuing upward trend may stress medical facilities.

“We are seeing substantial increases in the numbers of adults in hospitals with COVID-19. But with high levels of virus circulating locally, at least some of these people are likely hospitalized for other reasons and had COVID-19 diagnosed on routine screening,” said Neetu Balram, public information manager for Alameda County.

People stand in line to shop at Ver Brugge Meat-Fish Poultry along College Avenue in Oakland, masked up as the highly transmissable omicron variant of the coronavirus takes hold in the Bay Area.

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

“Intensive care unit COVID-19 hospitalizations are also rising locally, and this may put our hospitals under stress in the coming weeks.”

About 25% of the Bay Area’s intensive care unit beds remain available, according to state data.

“We still have capacity in our hospitals, but continue to monitor the situation,” the Santa Clara County health department said.

Nationwide, there were 103,329 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Monday, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. About 20% — 18,557 — are in intensive care unit beds, among hospitals reporting to the agency. The number is almost approaching the benchmark of 104,000 hospitalizations reported in September at the peak of the delta COVID surge.

As Bay Area students flooded back into schools Monday, the Food and Drug Administration approved Pfizer booster shots against the coronavirus for children as young as 12, to enhance protection in the face of the omicron variant’s ability to evade vaccines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects to rule on the recommendation later this week.

The FDA said everyone 12 and older eligible for a Pfizer booster can get one as early as five months after their last dose. Boosters already are recommended for everyone 16 and older.

Children tend to suffer less serious illness from COVID-19 than adults, but child hospitalizations are rising during the omicron wave — most of them unvaccinated.

“Hopefully, this will be not just a call for people to go get their booster shot,” but for the tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans to rethink that choice, said FDA chief vaccine Dr. Peter Marks. “It’s not too late to start getting vaccinated.”

San Francisco Chronicle reporters Erin Allday and Mallory Moench contributed to this story.

Aidin Vaziri is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: avaziri@sfchronicle.com

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The fear that a “very tight” US labor market will demand fuel wage demands is producing a consensus in Fed policy-making circles on the need for a 0.5 percentage point rise in its base interest rate at its next meeting in May, with possible further hikes of that magnitude at subsequent meetings.

Acting US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announces interest rates increase on March 16, 2022 (Source: CSPAN)

The president of the San Francisco Fed, Mary Daly, is one of those adding her voice to what is a growing chorus for a bigger rate rise than the 0.25 percent (25 basis points) the Fed instigated at its meeting last month.

In an interview with the Financial Times (FT), Daly said the case for a half percentage point rise in May had grown. She was commenting in the wake of the latest data from the Labor Department showing the unemployment rate had dropped to 3.6 percent, the lowest since before the pandemic.

The remarks by Daly are significant because she is generally regarded as one of the more “dovish” members of the Fed’s governing body.

“The case for 50 [basis points], barring any negative surprise between now and the next meeting has grown,” she told the FT. “I’m more confident that taking these early adjustments would be appropriate.”

As with all her counterparts in the Fed, starting with the chair Jerome Powell, Daly is focused on the issue of the labor market. The fear in ruling circles is that inflation is leading to upsurge in demands by workers for pay rises to compensate for the losses over the past two years and more.

Daly said the latest data showed the labor market is “very strong” and “tight to an unsustainable level.”

Her views echo previous remarks by Powell who has made clear he is prepared, if necessary, to take the road of former Fed chair Paul Volcker in the 1980s who lifted interest rates to record highs, inducing a deep recession, to crush wage demands.

Daly did not go that far but, according to the FT, they acknowledged the economy may have to slow to bring inflation back into line with the Fed’s 2 percent target.

The Fed’s interest rate moves have nothing to do with bringing down price hikes. They will not reduce the price of oil, lower the price of food and other necessities, or free up global supply chains, impacted by the refusal of governments internationally to take action to eliminate the pandemic.

Higher interest rates are aimed entirely at the working class, with the objective, as Powell has put it, of bringing back the demand for labor in line with supply—that is, by slowing the economy and lifting the jobless rate.

Other members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s interest rate setting body, want to go further than a one-off 50 basis point rise. Their ground was staked out by James Bullard, president of the St Louis Fed, who dissented from the 25 basis point increase in March and called for a rise of 50.

In an article last week entitled “Expectations grow that Fed will deploy jumbo-sized rate rises,” the FT noted predictions by Morgan Stanley that the Fed will deliver back-to-back 50 basis point rises starting in May, followed by 25 basis point adjustments at each of the four subsequent meetings for the year. These rises will accompany moves by the Fed to start winding back its holdings of nearly $9 trillion of financial assets which will add to upward pressure on market interest rates.

Citigroup has forecast four 50 basis point increases by the Fed at each of its next four meetings, so that the Fed rate reaches 3 percent by the end of the year.

Summing up the expectations last week, Simona Mocuta, chief economist at State Street Global Advisors, told the FT: “The signaling clearly has been very much on the hawkish side for some time, but that has gotten to a fever pitch in recent days. ” State Street Global Advisors is the investment management division of the State Street Corporation, the world’s fourth largest asset manager.

The expectation of higher Fed rates has led to the phenomenon of yield curve inversion where the rate on shorter-term Treasury bonds rises to a level higher than that on the 10-year bond. Under normal circumstances the rate on the longer-term debt is higher than the short-term rate because lending longer term involves greater risk and uncertainty and therefore demands a higher rate of return.

But last Friday the rate on the two-year Treasury bond reached 2.44 percent while that on the 10-year was 2.38 percent.

Yield curve inversion is regarded by many market analysts as a warning of a forthcoming recession as investors consider that the Fed has pushed up interest rates to levels that will induce a credit squeeze, leading to a recession and lower rates in the longer term.

Previous recessions have often been preceded by a yield curve inversion. Whether it takes place on this occasion remains to be seen. Experience is an increasingly uncertain guide because of the transformation of the US financial system as the result of 15 years of “quantitative easing” (QE). The Fed has pumped in trillions of dollars into the market, first after the crisis of 2008 and then following the market meltdown of March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.

The Fed is now treading a fine line. On the one hand it wants to raise rates to clamp down on a wages upsurge, while on the other it is fearful that a too rapid rise will bring down the financial house of cards it has created by its low interest rate and QE regime.

The actions by the Fed will have international ramifications as central banks around the world also move to lift rates to counter wage demands. It will also exacerbate the already large debt servicing problems for many developing economies and so-called emerging markets.

The class agenda driving central bank and monetary policy was indicated by former Treasury secretary Larry Summers in an interview with Bloomberg over the weekend.

Summers, who often indicates the thinking in financial circles—he was one of the first to take issue with the Fed’s claim for much of 2021 that inflation was “transitory”—pointed to the effect of higher rates on government debt.

He began by denouncing the call for a so-called billionaire tax as a “bad idea whose time will never come” and then turned to the issue of government debt. The very low interest rates being used to calculate its impact “look comical today.” With the ratio of government debt to GDP now at more than 100 percent, Summers said using more realistic rates would likely add 5 percent to the debt to GDP ratio.

This raises the ever-growing question of how the debt will be paid and, having ruled out tax rises, Summers left no doubt about where the ax should fall.

“We’re moving towards a moment when we’re going to have to start to think about fiscal policy as well as monetary policy as an anti-inflationary tool,” he told Bloomberg.

The cuts will come not through any reduction in military spending which has risen to record highs, a move Summers fully supports, but on vital social spending which hits the working class.

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SACRAMENTO (AP) — California’s jobless rate fell half a percentage point in December as the most populous state added 50,700 nonfarm jobs, accounting for more than a quarter of the country’s 199,000 new jobs for the month, according to new data released Friday .

The state has now regained almost 72% of the 2.7 million jobs it lost in the first few months of the pandemic when Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed the nation’s first statewide house arrest order in spring 2020 to slow the spread of the coronavirus .

CONTINUE READING: San Jose Police Chief Reports Fatal Shootout With Wanted Criminal After Attempted Car Theft

“In a tug-of-war between the positive economic momentum of the state’s economy and the headwinds of COVID, the California economy is making slow but steady progress,” said Sung Won Sohn, finance and economics professor at Loyola Marymount University.

However, he noted that the full impact of the Omicron wave had yet to be felt when the mid-month jobless survey went live.

This has forced airlines to cancel holiday flights, companies to let employees work from home and schools to return to online teaching, among others. It also prompted more parents to stay at home, contributing to what has come to be known as the “great resignation” phenomenon.

California’s unemployment rate of 6.5% is down from 9.3% a year ago as the state added nearly a million jobs since December 2020, the state Employment Development Department reported. Last month’s hiring surge still lagged behind an average gain of 97,200 jobs in earlier months of last year, before slowing in November and now December.

California also stayed well above the national unemployment rate of 3.9%.

The hard-hit leisure and hospitality sector led the rise last month by adding more than 15,000 jobs, with significant gains in food service and drinking establishments, the department said, despite pressure from the latest Omicron wave.

Ten of California’s 11 industrial sectors added jobs in December, and the professional and business services sector has now regained all the jobs it lost at the start of the pandemic.

A 6% increase in nonfarm payrolls in 2021 is the biggest increase in a calendar year for the state since 1990, the ministry said.

CONTINUE READING: Parental consent is not required for COVID shots of teens under proposed state law

But a big problem remains the “disappearing workforce in California,” said Michael Bernick, former director of employment development and attorney at law firm Duane Morris.

The state remains nearly 920,000 workers short of where it was employed in January 2020, just before the pandemic, he said.

New state-level job turnover data showed 1.1 million job openings in California at the end of November, a number that has held up since August even as employers scramble to find workers. Nevertheless, there were 415,000 voluntary resignations in November.

“Employers continue to report that even job seekers who respond to job offers do not show up for interviews,” Bernick said.

Officials revised the state’s November unemployment rate by 0.1 percentage point to 7%, adding 3,500 unemployed to its previous figure.

Nearly 356,000 people qualified for unemployment insurance during sample week in December, up from nearly 435,000 in November and more than 1 million a year ago. More than 49,000 initial claims were processed during the model week, more than 3,600 fewer than in November and more than 110,000 fewer than a year ago.

Colusa and Imperial counties posted double-digit unemployment rates last month, the worst in the state, while wealthier counties of Marin, San Mateo and Santa Clara in the San Francisco Bay Area had the lowest rates at under 3%.

“This year we will continue to take action to get more people back to work and to support our businesses hardest hit by the pandemic,” Newsom said in a statement.

MORE NEWS: Santa Clara County Officials Unveil Plan To Hand Out Free At-Home COVID Antigen Tests; How to sign up

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Millennium Tower in San Francisco, California on January 14, 2017. Source – Victorgrigas, CC SA 4.0.

The Millennium Tower in San Francisco is now 26 inches off center, with 10 inches of that tilt occurring last year while work was underway on an alleged repair, according to the project’s chief engineer.

Civil Engineer Ronald O. Hamburger spoke Thursday at a hearing in the city proposing an updated solution for the building’s foundation, NBC Bay Area reported. Hamburger’s new proposal would be to reduce the originally proposed 52 piles to 18, claiming this would “minimize additional building settlement.”

The 58-story, 645-foot tower opened to residents in 2009. The estimated $350 million project consists of two buildings, the larger of which houses 419 luxury apartments, including a lavish $13 million 5,500 square foot penthouse. It is the tallest residential building in the city

The tower’s uneven settlement has caused cracks in the surrounding sidewalk and basement walls of the smaller, 12-story sister building next door. The tower is adjacent to the Salesforce Transit Center, a bus terminal and potential future rail terminus for the California high-speed rail network currently under construction.

In May 2021, a $100 million project to save the Millennium Tower from sinking was begun, but work was halted on August 2 because the building had contributed to its thinness; Incline 5 inches toward Fremont Street, 25 percent more than before.

A letter to the Millennium Tower’s general manager last month said the new, faster solution was needed after engineers identified two possible causes of apparent deterioration in the building’s settlement: “vibration of the ground associated with piling activity and accidental removal of excess soil as the stakes were installed.”

Experts have blamed nearby construction projects and a process known as “drainage” for the weakening of the ground beneath the tower, according to previous CNN reports.

“We begin this new year of 2022 as we ended last year and many years, with the Millennium Tower continuing to sink and tip,” City Supervisor Aaron Peskin said at last week’s hearing, according to NBC.

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SAN FRANCISCO – Mandy Rong was terrified her 12-year-old daughter had COVID-19. It was 2 a.m. and the young girl was hours into a fierce fever and a racking cough. She was weak and didn’t want to eat. What few medications were on hand had expired. She sipped warm water instead.

“Mommy, why are my eyes on fire?” asked Amy Rong.

The mother and daughter, along with Rong’s parents, live in an 80-square-foot windowless single-room-occupancy Chinatown building that is a home of last resort for many impoverished Asian immigrants. Hallways are cramped, bathrooms and kitchens are communal. A ripe setting for the spread of the highly contagious novel coronavirus. 

That early March night felt endless. Rong, 42, repeatedly touched Amy’s forehead, wondering if her child would die in the small loft that the two shared. Down below, her father slept on the floor while her mother took the lone sofa bed. The grandparents were eager for updates on Amy’s fever, but they worried their whispers would wake her. 

In the morning, the fever had vanished, only to return a week later. Once again, the family endured a restless night. Rong made soup, but Amy wouldn’t eat it. She cooked porridge and spoon-fed it to her daughter. 

Getting tested for COVID-19 didn’t seem like an option for the Rongs. The rumor was that the tests were expensive. Rong also feared the reaction from neighbors.

“If you test positive, everyone would be scared of you,” said Rong. “Everyone would think you are the devil.”

It is easy to mistake San Francisco for a thriving Asian American haven. The city, which is its own county, boasts a bustling Chinatown, as well as a popular Japantown. Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, Vietnamese, Indians and Filipinos also have made their homes here. All told, Asians in San Francisco represent upward of 20 countries. 

But many Asian American immigrants in the county lead a fragile existence rendered even more precarious with the arrival of COVID-19. So far, 38% of the 123 COVID-19 deaths reported by the San Francisco Department of Public Health are Asian American residents, the most of any ethnicity.

COVID-19 has taken a toll on Asian American communities in San Francisco

Lack of government support and information has caused COVID-19 cases to rise in Asian American communities in San Francisco.

Harrison Hill, USA TODAY

Experts also are concerned that positivity rates among Asian Americans in San Francisco could be far higher than the 12% reported, a by-product of the decades-in-the-making model minority myth, which characterizes this ethnic group as financially successful, physically healthy and upwardly mobile. This belief has caused segments of the Asian American community to long be overlooked when it comes to social services for housing, employment and health. 

San Francisco is one of the few places in the nation tracking data on Asian Americans and COVID-19 deaths at a time when officials don’t know the ethnicity of the person affected in nearly half of the nation’s 7.8 million coronavirus cases. Around 17 million Americans are of Asian descent, or 5.6% of the population.

In many cases, Asian Americans in this city have received imprecise or no information in their native language about testing, safety tips, housing and other critical care services during the pandemic. At the same time, the community is struggling with inadequate access to comprehensive health care, the need to keep front-line employment and growing incidents of anti-Asian hate crimes.

“This model minority thing, that’s not us,” said Judy Young, executive director of the Southeast Asian Development Center, a San Francisco nonprofit that helps area residents from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. She said 80% of her clients have lost their mostly service industry jobs during the pandemic. 

“There is the language barrier and our community is small,” Young said. “So the city doesn’t think we have any problems when we do.”

So the city doesn’t think we have any problems when we do. – Judy Young, executive director of the Southeast Asian Development Center https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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Judy Young, executive director of the Southeast Asian Development CenterThere is the language barrier and our community is small. So the city doesn’t think we have any problems when we do.

That risk of invisibility is only heightened by the pandemic. Since city health officials do not break down COVID-19 statistics beyond “Asian American,” many advocates for the city’s various groups said they are left to speculate about coronavirus infection and death rates within their individual communities. How many people are dying, and are those people Japanese Americans? Vietnamese? Korean? Filipino? No one knows. 

“There’s this feeling that there’s excess death out there,” said Jeffrey Caballero, executive director of the nonprofit Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations. “That high mortality rate among Asian Americans means either there isn’t enough testing or people are waiting far too long to get care.”

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Xing Tam’s mother tested positive for COVID-19 in March. Her symptoms were mild. Medical officials told her to quarantine at home and avoid others. 

Suddenly, the working class Bayview district home where Tam, his mother and 17 other relatives and friends live together became uncomfortably crowded. Tam’s mother was given one of the three-story home’s 12 rooms. For weeks, everyone in the two-story house feared they would be next. 

As his mother recovered, Tam, 39, fretted about the cost of health care if he got sick. He worried the doctors wouldn’t be able to speak to him in words he could understand. 

Before the pandemic, life had started to improve for Tam. Five years ago, San Francisco relatives urged him to leave China’s Guangdong Province and try his luck in the U.S. He learned some English and landed a job at a hotel in catering. But when COVID-19 hit, his job vanished. 

The cost of housing in San Francisco is so expensive, his family has no option but to live together.

“Even if I test positive, I feel there is nothing the government will do to help me more,” he said. “I can see why some people look at Asians here and feel we are all well-off because we work hard and save whenever we can. But for many of us, it’s very challenging.”

But for many of us, it’s very challenging. – Xing Tam https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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Xing TamEven if I test positive, I feel there is nothing the government will do to help me more. I can see why some people look at Asians here and feel we are all well-off, because we work hard and save whenever we can. But for many of us, it’s very challenging.

For many Asian Americans in San Francisco, the high rate of COVID-19 deaths is directly linked to the corrosive and distorting effects of the model minority myth, said Dr. Tung Nguyen, a University of California, San Francisco professor of medicine.

Nguyen co-authored a report in May by the Asian American Research Center on Health that called attention to the fact that 50% of San Francisco’s 31 COVID-19 deaths at that time were among Asian Americans, disproportionately high considering they make up just over a third of the population.

Although that percentage has since dropped, Nguyen said a lack of detailed data about Asian Americans often means that city funds aren’t allocated to this group.  

“The truth is we are the ones who lose out as a result of this stereotype,” he added.

To be sure, the fortunes and contributions of many Asian Americans have skyrocketed in past decades. The median annual income of households headed by the nation’s 22 million Asian Americans is $73,060, compared with $53,600 for all U.S. households, according to the Pew Research Center.

But these success stories obscure the troubling reality facing many Asian Americans.

“You simply cannot look at Asian Americans as a monolithic group because if you do that, you’re going to miss how different communities experience the pandemic,” said Jarvis Chen, a lecturer in social and behavioral sciences at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Massachusetts.

A closer look at San Francisco’s two dozen Asian ethnicities reveals many groups within this broad categorization are struggling financially and remain outside the mainstream. About 43% are non-English speakers, according to a USA TODAY analysis of U.S. census data. About a third of San Franciscans are foreign-born, and 13% are not U.S. citizens. 

“With Asian Americans, the average always is pulled way up by those doing very well, which means you miss the groups who clearly are not,” said Margaret Simms, a nonresident fellow with The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., who specializes in race and labor economics. The think tank found nearly 13% of Asian American senior citizens live in poverty compared to a 9% national average.

you miss the groups who clearly are not. – Margaret Simms, non-resident fellow with The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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Margaret Simms, non-resident fellow with The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.With Asian Americans, the average always is pulled way up by those doing very well, which means you miss the groups who clearly are not.

Discrimination also is keeping some Asian Americans from getting tested for COVID-19. The website Stop AAPI Hate, the acronym for Asian American Pacific Islander, has logged more than 2,500 incidents of discrimination across the U.S. since mid-March. The attacks have ranged from verbal assaults to acts of physical violence.

When Asian Americans hear President Donald Trump, who contracted COVID-19 in October, repeatedly call the virus the “China virus” and “Kung Flu,” “it makes them less likely to seek help, a bit like early in the AIDS epidemic when the gay community was stigmatized,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside and chair of the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs. “We fear many Asian American families have gone underground.”

Chinese citizens began passing through San Francisco’s then bridgeless Golden Gate en masse during the Gold Rush of 1849. By 1851, some 25,000 had arrived, lured by the hope of riches in a land called Gum Saan in Cantonese, or “gold mountain.” 

By the late 1800s, the Chinese were not just vilified but outright barred from entering the country, with few exceptions, by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. White officials charged they were taking jobs from other Americans, despite having been integral to the Gold Rush’s boom and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.

At the height of World War II, Japanese Americans around the country were rounded up and sent to internment camps, feared as the traitorous “yellow peril” after years of citizenship. Despite painful and humiliating treatment at the hands of the U.S. government, many Asians resolved to engrain themselves in the society at large with an image of themselves as patriotic, hardworking Americans. Japanese Americans were among the most decorated U.S. soldiers during the war, and others excelled in academics and commerce.

The model minority image gained momentum during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Asian American success stories were highlighted by white U.S. officials both as a way of signaling to other nations, namely the Soviet Union, that America was not racist, but also to shame other ethnic groups, notably Black Americans.

The logic went that if Asian Americans were doing so well, surely failure on the part of other ethnic groups was their own fault.

Then came the Vietnam War, a quagmire that resulted in a U.S.-sponsored evacuation of 125,000 refugees followed by countless others who escaped Southeast Asia in rickety boats. Many landed in San Francisco.

“The stereotype about us is broad and includes the notion that we’re all studious, we don’t get into trouble and commit crimes, and even the poor don’t have health care issues,” said Ellen Wu, author of “The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority” and history professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. “That’s quite the change from before World War II when many of us were seen as unclean and prone to diseases.”

California Assemblymember David Chiu, a Democrat who represents the eastern half of San Francisco and chairs the California Asian & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, said lawmakers must recognize that Asian Americans are a loosely linked group of immigrants with distinct challenges and needs.  

but our issue hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. – David Chiu, California Assemblymember https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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David Chiu, California AssemblymemberThe attention being paid to the disparities endured during the pandemic by Black and Latinos is important, but our issue hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.

“The attention being paid to the disparities endured during the pandemic by Black and Latinos is important, but our issue hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves,” he said. 

One small demographic victory for Asian Americans came in 1997 when President Bill Clinton directed the Office of Management and Budget to expand its data classification system to break out “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders” from the Asian American group. That geographic list includes countries such as Micronesia, Tonga, Vanuatu, Guam, the Marshall Islands and Fiji.

As a result, we know today that Pacific Islanders rank third in terms of COVID-19 deaths, behind Native Americans and Black Americans. 

But many other Asians said they are largely neglected by government officials.

What disappoints Marc Belocura most, he said, is that he feels ignored despite living in a part of town that city officials once highlighted as a bastion of Filipino culture.

“Since the city obviously knows we are here, why is there not more outreach that is culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate?” said Belocura, 23. “Or maybe we just are not on their radar.”

People shop at the produce market in Chinatown in downtown San Francisco on Sept. 29, 2020. Last fall, Asians accounted for nearly 40% of COVID-19 deaths in the city.Harrison Hill, USA TODAY

Belocura girds himself each time he prepares to leave the one-room studio he shares with his parents and sister to shop for food and supplies.

Even before COVID-19, his aging neighborhood just south of Market Street was crumbling. Now more storefronts have shuttered. To avoid the homeless camps that have mushroomed across the area, Belocura walks in the street and hopes he doesn’t get hit by a car.

When he makes it home, he must then navigate a narrow stairwell to get into his one-room apartment on the second floor of a five-story building. 

Belocura’s parents, who are 71 and 60, share the lone bed. His sister, 35, and he put pillows on the floor each night. Transmission in the studio’s confines would likely be immediate.

“That’s why I just can’t get COVID when I go out,” he said. “I can’t.”

Asian American communities in San Francisco speak a range of languages including Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Laotian, Samoan, Tongan, Vietnamese and Hindi. The city’s website notes that COVID-19 information is available in English, Chinese, Filipino and Spanish.

Efforts by city health officials to inform Asian residents about COVID-19 safety precautions and testing in their native languages have sometimes resulted in confusing or alienating translations.

For example, information about pop-up virus testing sites sometimes can come across as demands, while in other cases the language is just plain confusing.

One flyer written in the Filipino language of Tagalog told people to “cover their entire face,” said Luisa Antonio, executive director of the Bayanihan Equity Center, a Filipino American support group. 

In another instance, an Aug. 11 health advisory issued by the city showed Tier 1 Priority were those hospitalized with symptoms, Tier 2 was anyone with symptoms or close contact with confirmed cases, and Tier 2A included a list of ethnic groups “experiencing marginalization, systemic inequity and health inequities.” 

Black, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander residents were mentioned – but no other Asian groups, said Dr. Amy Tang, director of immigrant health at North East Medical Services, a health clinic that focuses on the city’s Chinese American population.

“To not include other Asians among ethnic minorities who should get tested is pretty appalling,” said Tang. 

is pretty appalling. – Dr. Amy Tang, director of immigrant health at North East Medical Services https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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Dr. Amy Tang, director of immigrant health at North East Medical ServicesTo not include other Asians among ethnic minorities who should get tested is pretty appalling.

Department of Public Health officials declined an interview request about outreach efforts. An e-mailed response from the city’s COVID-19 Command Center offered condolences to the loved ones of those who died from COVID-19 and noted that a majority of people who died were over 60 and had underlying health conditions.

In California, about 5 million of 40 million state residents are Asian American, and in three-quarters of those homes, languages other than English are spoken regularly, according to the U.S. census.

Sasanna Yee, co-founder of the nonprofit Communities as One, said city officials need to pay closer attention to capturing the cultural nuances that are sometimes lost in poor translations.

Depending on how things are written, they can trigger alarm, Yee added. “Who is asking me to come out? What is this information used for? Can I trust who is asking me to do this?”

Even some Asian Americans who speak fluent English said government officials have not made it easy to get information about the virus. 

Huiting “Rita” Huang grew alarmed when her mother-in-law told her that there had been a positive coronavirus case among the Chinese emigres to whom she was providing nursing services. The mother-in-law was unsure what to do and feared her poor English would make getting information about where to get tested even harder.

Huang felt confident she could help. Her English was solid and she had experience getting COVID-19 information as a project coordinator and health educator for the nonprofit NICOS Chinese Health Coalition.

Instead, she wound up mired in a bureaucratic doom loop. After pursuing a series of online testing-site leads through a variety of city- and community-run websites – all requiring fluency in English – Huang soon learned that there were no available appointments at testing facilities close to their neighborhood.

Huang eventually found a city-run testing site near Pier 30 along San Francisco Bay. The test was negative.

“That was frustrating for me, and I speak English,” said Huang. “I can’t imagine what it would be like for someone like my mother-in-law. Well, I imagine you would simply give up on the hope of getting tested.“

Asian Americans in San Francisco are often left behind by city partnerships aimed at helping vulnerable populations. Efforts to increase COVID-19 testing sites largely involve Latino groups, such as Unidos En Salud. The city’s various isolation and quarantine sites for the homeless and partially housed also are being used largely by the city’s Latino population, with Hispanics making up 45% of those in shelters while Asians account for 7%.

Asian activists and health care workers trying to fill the void said they face a population that often is wary of Western medicine, fatalistic about getting the virus, culturally averse to passing along bad news to elders and nervous about losing employment.

Natalie Ah Soon, health planner with the Asian Pacific Islander Health Parity Coalition advocacy group, said some people have told her, “If God means for me to be COVID-19 positive, then OK.”

Kent Woo, executive director of the NICOS Chinese Health Coalition, said residents sometimes are suspicious of health care workers when they visit local low-income buildings to talk about coronavirus safety tips. 

“Folks say, ‘What’s the point of being tested?’ or ‘We don’t know where to go if we get infected,'” he said. “When we offer the option to anyone who tests positive to leave the premises and go to a hotel, they refuse.”

Teams have started to be more proactive, he said, heading to single-room occupancy residences and other housing complexes before there is any rumor of a positive test. The goal is to prepare residents so they know how to respond if someone falls sick. 

The need is dire. Amy Dai, project coordinator for the Chinatown Community Development Center, an advocacy group that also manages low-income properties, learned that in a building she manages, 10 residents out of 30 families had tested positive.

A deserted Grant Street in Chinatown on April 1, 2020, in San Francisco.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

When she approached two of the residents who had come down with a fever, they assured her they couldn’t be positive because they had not left the building. A subsequent visit to a doctor confirmed they had COVID-19. 

If they had not waited to get tested, “it could have prevented the other infections,” said Dai.

The virus has many of San Francisco’s Asian Americans living like shut-ins.

Only reluctantly did Sisong Thepkaysone, 70, recently make her way from her public housing building overlooking a freeway to her doctor’s office for a routine check-up. She hasn’t seen any information about COVID-19 testing in her native Laotian. All she knows is she must stay healthy.

The trip filled her with dread. With some public transportation routes canceled, she had to change buses, prolonging her exposure. Worse yet, some passengers weren’t wearing masks. 

if I got the virus. – Sisong Thepkaysone, a former Thai-restaurant cook https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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Sisong Thepkaysone, a former Thai-restaurant cookI’m old, I have asthma. I’m not sure what I would do if I got the virus.

“I’m old, I have asthma,” Thepkaysone, a former Thai-restaurant cook who fled war-torn Laos with three young boys and no husband in 1981, said through an interpreter. “I’m not sure what I would do if I got the virus.”

Once at the doctor’s office, an interpreter was called by phone to translate medication directions. Thepkaysone grew upset. She expected quality medical care after the risk she had put herself through, not a faceless voice. 

“It was not a personal experience, she said. “I didn’t like it.” 

Thepkaysone prefers to spend her days at home making Laotian dishes for relatives. She used to go out to shop and visit a local Buddhist temple to give alms. But now her children shop for her and the temple is closed. Sometimes she checks in on friends through Facebook. She watches television, but her limited knowledge of English renders programs a pantomime.

“I’m careful,” she said. “All I know is the virus is easy to get.”

Rong never found out whether her daughter had COVID-19. But her days remain filled with dread.

For the past few months, the family has had little money for food or rent, which is $750 a month. Sometimes, neighbors give them something to eat; other times she goes to the local food bank. 

“We eat lots of potatoes,” she said.

It’s a far cry from the life she envisioned for herself. In Guangdong Province, Rong had a promising job as a clothing store clerk. At the urging of her former husband’s parents, she emigrated 12 years ago to California, where she found work as a janitor to keep the family afloat. Since the pandemic hit, she has been on unemployment insurance.

That’s left the family with no option but to remain in their Chinatown apartment. The communal kitchen isn’t cleaned regularly. Sometimes, leaks from a floor above make their way to the shower on the floor below. Often, the leaking fluid smells like urine. 

“Smell me, Mom, I’m more dirty than before I showered,” Amy Rong once told her mother.

Rong doesn’t know anyone who has contracted the virus. For her neighbors in the building, getting tested remains a common fear. 

Mostly, Rong waits for the day when the pandemic is over. For a day when it will feel safe to venture outside. For a day when her American dream can resume.

Contributing: Myron Lee, Mark Nichols

Follow USA TODAY national correspondent Marco della Cava: @marcodellacava

Explore the series »

Deadly Discrimination

Racist policies mean many Black, Latino, Asian and Indigenous Americans are poorer and sicker than white Americans. COVID-19 makes these inequalities deadly.

This six-part USA TODAY investigation shows how the policies of the past and present have made people of color prime targets for COVID-19. Reporters travelled to five counties that embody the effects of systemic racism to bring these stories to light.

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It’s really an unbelievable chain of oppression – it’s still squeezing us, it still has its grip. And it’s still killing us.
– Anna Marie Rondon, executive director of the New Mexico Social Justice and Equity Institute in McKinley County

The post Racism drives excessive demise fee in San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

In addition to the 7.87 million square feet of unlet office space now distributed throughout the city of San Francisco, up from 6.7 million square feet of unlet space three months ago, there is now an additional 7.99 million square feet of office space, according to Cushman & Wakefield Rented space that is vacant and offered for sublet. That equates to 7.2 million square feet of sublet space at the end of last year.

This means that there is now 15.85 million square meters of vacant office space across the city, which corresponds to a vacancy rate of 18.7 percent. This corresponds to a vacancy rate of 16.7 percent three months ago compared to a vacancy rate of 6.0 percent at the same time last year. This does not include a further 1.3 million square meters of space that is either under construction or is currently being renovated.

While leasing activity rose from a 30-year low at the end of 2020, only 433,000 square meters of space were rented in the first quarter of 2021. This equates to a lease of 1.1 million square feet in the first quarter in the last quarter, a long-term average of around 1.6 million square feet per quarter and a DotCom-era low of 933,000 square feet in the second quarter of 2001.

And while landlords remained stable in the second quarter of last year, the average asking rents for office space in San Francisco are now down 12 percent to $ 73.76 per square foot per year, reflecting mid-2018 vacancy rates closer to 7 percent, which suggests there is still a lot to fall.

The post Workplace Emptiness Fee Continues to Climb in San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.