Why does SF Chinatown have few cases of COVID-19? It’s complicated

People wear a COVID-19 coronavirus mask in San Francisco, California, Chinatown on July 28, 2020.

Outdoor dinners look at a menu as they prepare to order at a place to eat at Grant Ave. Many pedestrians in the community wear a COVID-19 coronavirus mask in The Chinatown of San Francisco, California, on July 28.

The owner of a store delivers an order to take to a customer. Pedestrians Most people wear a COVID-19 coronavirus mask in San Francisco Chinatown, California, on July 28, 2020.

Pedestrians cross Stockton Street while wearing a COVID-19 coronavirus mask in The Chinatown of San Francisco, California, on July 28, 2020.

Shoppers wear a COVID-19 coronavirus mask when they shop for groceries on Stockton Street in San Francisco, in the Chinatown community of San Francisco, California, on July 28, 2020.

Days after the first case of the new coronavirus was reported in the United States on January 21, San Francisco’s Chinatown was preparing for its annual Chinese New Year festivities. With many other people traveling between China and S.F. for the holidays, fears are greater that an epidemic could erupt in this 24-block block block of the city. The mayor of London Breed held a press convention to reassure the city that it was safe to celebrate, and Breed received the parade in a car on 8 February.

Thousands of people have moved ahead of events, but there has never been an uncontrollable epidemic, and even after a July case outbreak in San Francisco, Chinatown still has the fewest cases in the city.

After Sea Cliff, where fewer than 10 cases were detected, Chinatown has the lowest number in the city with 28 cases, according to the knowledge of the S.F. Department of Public Health. By comparison, 3 of the city’s hardest-hit neighborhoods, Mission District, Bayview Hunters Point, and Tenderloin, recorded 980, 916, and 610 instances, respectively.

The small number of cases in Chinatown is disconcerting. While the domain has a population of only about 15,000, it is one of the most densely populated spaces in the city and is known for its overcrowded living situations with older people and overcrowded families in individual apartments (SRO), ideal situations for transmission. COVID-19Array

S.f. State officials said non-easy conditions, with multigenerational families living together in small neighborhoods, contributed to an increase in the number of instances in the project district, where the case rate was 207 positive tests consistent with 10,000 citizens on Tuesday. In Chinatown, the case rate is significantly reduced, with 19 cases consistent with a population of 10,000.

For what?

Pedestrians wear COVID-19 coronavirus masks in the Chinatown community of San Francisco, California, July 28, 2020.

Health experts in San Francisco have detected the trend, and they don’t know precisely why instances are particularly low in Chinatown, but they suspect this is due to lack of evidence and undetected instances, or the fact that citizens have followed masked dresses early. pandemic and following the order of implementation with surveillance. During the Chinese New Year parade, before the first case detected in the city and long before fitness officials encouraged face covering, a handful of others wore a mask, according to media reports.

“I don’t think we have enough data to know,” said Dr. Kent Woo, executive director of the Chinese NICOS Health Coalition. “I suppose it’s a mixture of the two. We did a little smart task of taking refuge on the site. We don’t leave the space and we don’t even leave the space for physical care that we want to be tested for.”

The S.F. The Ministry of Public Health provides knowledge about the total number of controls implemented in the city, but does not break them down at the ward level. The exact number of other people registered in Chinatown is unknown, but Woo said the verification rate may be low due to a number of factors, adding the lack of schooling on Chinese checks.

“We don’t have a real rate,” Woo said. “The other people in Chinatown didn’t pass the test.”

UC San Francisco helped control 4,000 Mission District citizens at a four-day network event in April and about 850 Bayview citizens in May. Chinatown has experienced a widespread verification effort at this scale, however, it has led the city to verify the SRO.

The Chinese hospital, an acute care center in downtown Chinatown and the remaining network hospital in the city, spearheaded an effort to provide loose SRO testing and tactile search tracking.

“We have established a hotline for them to call,” said Dr. Jian Zhang, the hospital’s general manager. “If they show symptoms, we do their tests right away. They can be quarantined to spread to others.”

Woo applauded the effort, but said some citizens were reluctant to undergo testing. He noted that out of every hundred people, 40 said the tests would be done, but only 19 were presented.

“We want more awareness and education to break the barriers to going out and taking the test,” Woo said.

Dr. Sunny Pak, director of the Chinatown Public Health Center, said the purpose of controlling more residents.

“The question is how to do it effectively,” Pak said. “The question is, if we set up a control site, will they come? They are afraid to contract the virus at the control site, the elderly would probably not have to present themselves. We see what has been done in the Mission District and the question is: do we reflect this here in Chinatown? It’s complicated. It’s not that simple. It probably wouldn’t work, so we have to be very careful. We’ve been assembling for weeks to see how to proceed. “

Pedestrians wear COVID-19 coronavirus masks in the Chinatown community of San Francisco, California, July 28, 2020.

Another speculation of the low case rate in Chinatown is that organizations and citizens of the community have followed social estrangement measures and the recommendation to dress in a mask before other communities, preventing widespread transmission.

San Francisco issued an ordinance requiring face masks in last May, but Chinatown residents used them from January and February.

Dr. Ben Lui of the nonprofit On Lok Lifeways explained that the local population had close ties to the circle of family members in China who experienced the 2003 SARS outbreak, in which the practice of dressing in a mask has become commonplace.

“Even in non-pandemic times, it’s not unusual for Asians to wear masks when they have a cold, because it’s rude to cough in public,” said Lui, head of medical informatics at On Lok, an organization that takes care of the elderly. Array “There are many immigrants, other people who pass from one side to the other, young immigrants, there is a sure convenience in dressing in masks.”

In addition, citizens were in contact with the circle of member relatives in China who were experiencing the coronavirus pandemic that began in Wuhan.

“It has been said or said that many others with a circle of relatives in Asia had been invited through a circle of relatives in Asia to wear a mask before Dr. Fauci or public fitness officials said that,” Woo added with NICOS.

Elaine Xhu, who works at Fashion Bag and Gifts on Grant Avenue in Chinatown, said she dressed in a mask from the beginning of the pandemic.

“For the Chinese, being healthy is the most vital thing,” Xhu said. “Everyone in China, adding my fiancé, started sending me a mask through the air. My friends here, they all won the mask of their circle of relatives in China.

A customer wears a mask and a shield when they buy. Pedestrians wear COVID-19 coronavirus masks in the Chinatown community of San Francisco, California, July 28, 2020.

Chinatown has its own media and media network, adding the newspapers Sing Tao Daily and World Journal, and they have helped teach the network from the beginning the importance of dressing in masks, washing hands and staying away from others. Zhang said network education began in January.

“That’s when we turned clinics into control centers, opened the hotline to teach people, worked largely with Chinese media to teach the network and network leaders,” Zhang said. “I think everyone thinks the epidemic would occur in Chinatown because of the Chinese New Year and we also have a lot of citizens returning to China, so we did it so early.”

The San Francisco Department of Public Health also began focusing on network prevention in January, distributing fact sheets to various organizations, fitness service providers, and the media; Invite network leaders to COVID-19 roundtables; and the organization of a parent forum in partnership with the S.F. Unified School District to answer questions and considerations about the virus.

A woman chooses nuts to buy at a store on Stockton Street. Buyers wear a COVID-19 coronavirus mask for themselves in the Chinatown of San Francisco, California, on July 28, 2020.

Another surprising point in San Francisco’s KNOWLEDGE of COVID-19 is that the death toll in San Francisco is a disproportionate number of deaths among Asian-born Americans.

In F.S., 26 of the other 61 people who died as a result of COVID-19 headaches are Asian-born Americans, the organization accounts for 10% of the general cases and about one-third of the city’s general population.

The city does not give a percentage of the exact number of deaths in Chinatown, but notices in its knowledge that it is less than 10, the same number in neighborhoods with capital rates. “Our mortality rate is very high,” Zhang said. “You realize that almost part of the deaths are of Asian origin. I think that’s all we want to see.”

Compared to other cities, such as New York, with more than 23,000 deaths, the death toll in San Francisco has remained relatively low, experts opposing drawing conclusions warn. But the highest proportion of death cases among Asian Americans is not unique to San Francisco and exists in other parts of California and the country, according to recent studies from the Asian American Health Research Center, or ARCH.

“Wherever we locate evidence, we found that this trend persisted,” said Dr. Tung Nguyen, professor of medicine at UCSF and the ARCH report.

For example, Nguyen, in Los Angeles, said, where 15% of the population are Asian-born Americans, 3.8% and 16.84% of deaths were in this group.

Nguyen and his colleagues list the imaginable reasons for the highest proportion of death cases among Asian-born Americans, adding limited access to testing, higher rates of underlying aptitude problems, and a larger population.

Most states and counties do not provide “knowledge stratified by race and age, but knowledge of Santa Clara County recommends that deaths of Asian-born Americans be grouped among others over the age of 80,” the report says. This may also be the case in San Francisco.

“Everyone must know why, ” said Nguyen. “You don’t know why unless you gather knowledge. Across the country, they don’t collect smart knowledge about Asian-Americans. Many states share them with Pacific islanders. You want to make a more complicated knowledge collection so that we can get more answers.”

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Amy Graff is the editor-in-chief of SFGATE. Write to him: [email protected].

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