Omicron in Oakland: How a Wisconsin wedding with 'super responsible' vaccinated people led to outbreak
Bay Area // Health
Dec. 9, 2021 Updated: Dec. 10, 2021 5:33 p.m.
The omicron variant spread among employees of Kaiser Permanente's Oakland Medical Center, shown in 2014.
Michael Short/The Chronicle 2014
Most if not all of the guests wore masks when the Nov. 27 wedding ceremony started at a Wisconsin celebration that is now the suspected origin of an outbreak of COVID-19 and the omicron variant among Kaiser Permanente's Oakland Medical Center staff, according to an attendee.
But as the celebration wore on, the cocktails came out and people took to the dance floor, many leaving their masks behind, said Debra Furr-Holden, an epidemiologist and associate dean of public health at Michigan State University, who was in attendance and believes she contracted the coronavirus there.
Furr-Holden said the revelation that even this group of "risk-averse" and "super responsible people" could have let their guard down enough to become unwitting vectors of COVID-19 shows just how vulnerable even vaccinated people remain to the virus when indoors and in groups.
"We need to shift the narrative and stop calling this a pandemic of the unvaccinated," Furr-Holden said. "It doesn't honor the fact that we're seeing more and more breakthrough cases in the vaccinated."
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More than a dozen wedding attendees went home infected with COVID-19, including 11 people who work for Kaiser Permanente in the East Bay. Some went to work before finding out they were infected, causing potential exposure of the virus to a total of 38 other employees and patients at two Oakland hospitals, health officials said.
Six of 12 known cases among East Bay residents who attended the Wisconsin wedding are due to the omicron variant, according to the Alameda County Public Health Department.
Wisconsin public health officials on Dec. 3 announced they were investigating the outbreak but had not yet found any local positive cases among wedding guests. Officials had no updated information about their investigation this week. They said one wedding guest had recently returned from an international trip.
Masks are not required to be worn in public places indoors in Milwaukee, though the city's public health department encourages it.
Kaiser Permanente said 11 of its employees at Oakland Medical Center were infected, and they were all fully vaccinated and had received booster shots. The staffers potentially exposed eight patients plus another eight employees, leading to quarantines and shuffling staff assignments to cover shifts. As of Dec. 8, 13 of those exposed had tested negative.
Kaiser wouldn't provide any further details about the outbreak, such as the department involved or if any additional patients or employees tested positive. Kaiser officials said in a statement that the possible window of exposure was "brief and isolated."
"The few affected staff members, who are in patient-facing roles, worked briefly prior to being symptomatic or tested and all adhered to COVID-19 infection prevention guidance while in the facility," according to the statement.
At least one of the positive cases also worked at Highland Hospital, where officials have notified staff and begun contact-tracing efforts to ensure no others are infected. Victoria Balladares, director of communications for Highland's parent organization, Alameda Health System, said that 11 other staff members and 11 patients were potentially exposed and none has so far tested positive for COVID-19.
Furr-Holden, who lives in Flint, Mich., serves on the Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities, the Greater Flint Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Inequity, and a task force convened to promote trust in and access to COVID-19 vaccines among Black residents of New York City. She said she felt confident she could travel safely and was told most of the wedding attendees were vaccinated.
Public health officials in Michigan on Thursday said a first case of omicron had been detected in Kent County. Furr-Holden said she had suspected the variant was already circulating in her state. She provided a sample to a public health laboratory for variant analysis and is waiting for the results.
Omicron has been detected in 25 states so far.
After she got home from the wedding, Furr-Holden said she was already concerned about a scratchy throat when she received a Dec. 1 text message from the bride, a beloved former student of hers, that someone from the wedding had tested positive for COVID-19. Furr-Holden tested positive for the virus the next day.
Furr-Holden said she must have infected her daughter, who has a 3-month-old baby and also tested positive for COVID-19. They spent a week in isolation away from the baby, a heartbreaking but essential measure of protection. The child was cared for by another family member and never developed symptoms.
Furr-Holden said she and her daughter had mild symptoms including a sore throat, headache and fatigue when active.
Thinking back on the wedding, Furr-Holden said she believes the presence of responsible, vaccinated guests provided a "false sense of security" at a time when the pandemic is exhausting yet not over. She said she kept her mask on apart from eating and drinking and left the reception early, but "that clearly wasn't enough."
Furr-Holden commended the bride for quickly notifying guests and said she hoped it would provide caution for others making choices about how to safely socialize.
"If I had to do it all over again, I would have sent a nice gift and a loving handwritten card," Furr-Holden said. "We just shouldn't be having these large events now. If physicians and public health professionals can't do it, there's just no safe way to do it."
Julie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: julie.johnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @juliejohnson
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Julie Johnson covers the changing climate, sea level rise and strategies to stem California's wildfire crisis. Before joining The Chronicle, she spent 11 years as a staff writer at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, where she had a leading role on the breaking news team awarded the 2018 Pulitzer for coverage of the 2017 Wine Country fires. Julie has covered murderous pot deals, police corruption and marijuana's rocky path from a black-market trade to a legitimate industry.