Community leaders in San Francisco's Mission District concerned as COVID cases rise
SAN FRANCISCO -- Mission Food Hub, a nonprofit serving residents of San Francisco's Mission District, announced Thursday that it began registering an uptick in people coming in for COVID-19 testing and vaccines about three weeks ago.
Founder Roberto Hernandez said he's working to educate people -- especially the most vulnerable -- in the Mission District about the surge in COVID cases.
"The worst part of all this is people are calling us and saying they've got COVID and people are concerned because there's people that never got vaccinated," he said.
During the height of the pandemic, the free testing and vaccine site, which is normally set up on the sidewalk outside the organization's warehouse, operated seven days a week. Currenly, it's down to two days a week. Depending on the resources available and severity of the surge, Hernandez said he'll work to add more days.
"Especially the Latino and Black community, we know that we're at the highest risk because we're again the essential workers. We're doing work where we're not protected versus other people who can work out of their home, shelter at home," he said.
Dr. Bob Wachter, chairman of the UCSF department of medicine, said there's no question there are more cases of COVID now than a month or two ago.
"A little bit of an increase in hospitalizations, an increase in the wastewater positivity, which is probably the best way we have to tell how much COVID there is around," Wachter. said. "It's important to say though that the height of the uptick is nowhere near the kind of surges we saw in the past with Omicron and Delta."
He said most people have some level of immunity and a new booster coming out in the next week should work very well against the new variant, called BA.2.86.
He says that people who are elderly or immunocompromised should get the booster.
As for the young and healthy, Dr. Wachter had this advice.
"I think the net benefits outweigh the risks so ... if my 30-yearish-old kids ask me 'should I get the booster?' I would say 'yes.'"
"For our community, we have to go out and work. So we have to jump on the Muni bus, you're being exposed, you have to jump on BART, you're being exposed, you're being exposed at work so one of the things we're encouraging people, again, if you are not healthy, please mask up," Hernandez said.