Tag Archives: California

California reaches deal to fund school reopening for youngest children

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – California’s governor said on Monday he and Democratic lawmakers had reached a deal to fund the reopening of schools for students up to second grade, as the numbers of new COVID-19 cases in the state and country drop to their lowest this year.

A Reuters tally shows that COVID-19 infections are decreasing in the United States, with 68,240 new infections reported on average each day, or 27% of the peak daily average reported on Jan. 7. The United States has recorded 28,681,793 infections and 513,721 coronavirus-related deaths since the pandemic began.

California’s $6.6 billion budget package marks the latest effort by a U.S. state to get school children back in class after nearly a year confined to home learning by political leaders in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

“You can’t reopen your economy unless you get your schools reopened for in-person instruction,” Governor Gavin Newsom, said at a Monday afternoon news briefing announcing the agreement with Democratic leaders in the state legislature.

But the deal does not include an order by Newsom, a first-term Democrat, for public schools to open by a certain date, and the governor conceded that negotiations may still need to take place with teachers’ unions.

“We expect all of our transitional kindergarten to grade two classrooms open within the next month,” Newsom said. “And our core belief is this: Once you dip your toe in … once you build trust, then we will start to see a cadence of reopening across the spectrum.”

The $6.6 billion will partly pay for personal protective gear and improved classroom ventilation. The deal would also make vaccinating teachers and other school employees a priority in California, the nation’s most populous state.

NEWSOM CRITICIZED

Newsom has imposed some of the harshest restrictions of any U.S. state on California’s roughly 40 million residents, and many businesses remain closed one year into the pandemic.

The governor, who was sharply criticized after he was photographed eating at a posh Napa Valley restaurant late last year despite ordering Californians to stay home, has seen his approval ratings dip and is the subject of a recall effort.

Despite plummeting numbers of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths nationwide, most students across the United States remain stuck at home as governors and local leaders seek to navigate complicated political and logistical hurdles to reopen schools.

Public school students in many of Maryland’s most populous areas returned to in-class instruction on Monday.

“School buses are on the road this morning – a welcome sight as we give more young Marylanders the opportunity to get safely back in the classroom,” Governor Larry Hogan said on Twitter.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on Monday announced that as of March 15, pre-K-12 teachers and childcare workers would be eligible for vaccination.

While New Jersey lags behind other states in making vaccinations available to teachers, Murphy said two-thirds of classes are already hybrid or completely in-person.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)

COVID-19 vaccine chasers hunt, wait and hope in Los Angeles

By Norma Galeana

SANTA FE SPRINGS, Calif. (Reuters) – Jose Luis Espinoza had been chasing a COVID-19 vaccine for more than three weeks.

He hadn’t hugged his 98-year-old father in a long time, and was hoping a vaccine would change that. Last week, he struck gold in Santa Fe Springs.

“It was the last dose they gave, and I was the lucky one,” the 68-year-old said.

The chase for leftover vaccine doses is widespread and competitive in Los Angeles. The wait can last for hours outside a clinic or vaccination site, and most people are turned away without a shot.

Clinics have leftover doses when people cancel their appointments at the last minute or don’t show up. Once opened, vaccine vials have an expiry date: 5 days for the Pfizer vaccine and 30 days for the Moderna one.

“We need to make sure if we’re going to pull out that vaccine, that we have the people signed up and the resources and the event scheduled,” said Will Baker, clinic manager for private ambulance service CARE Ambulance, stressing the importance of not wasting any of the precious doses.

‘NEVER GUARANTEED’

Vaccine chasers have been criticized for getting doses when it’s not their turn, perhaps taking it away from someone who might need it more.

“I’m here in the hope that there’s some that might be left over,” said Cynthia Perez, 48, the first to arrive when the Santa Fe Springs clinic opened at 2:00pm.

“So I’m not trying to jump the line. I’m just trying to take advantage of any vaccines or any doses that might be thrown away,” she said.

Perez said she had a child with asthma, and was in ill-health herself, adding, “I’m trying to get ahead of the curve a bit and stay healthy.”

As the evening wore on, the line of chasers outside the clinic grew, and Baker took down their details. Throughout the day, he counted the doses left at each vaccine station, revised the list of appointments, and did the math.

When the clinic closed at 6 p.m., and there was a single shot left over, he called Espinoza’s name.

“I went over the guidelines and I looked for anyone in the line that was 1A,” Baker explained, referring to the first category of vaccine allocation as recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We did have one person in the line that met the 1A criteria and we were able to get him a vaccine today,” he said.

Then Baker went outside and told the rest of the line there were no more doses for the day, apologizing and thanking everyone for their patience.

Perez picked up her bag and headed home, disappointed but not deterred.

“You can’t be upset. It’s never guaranteed,” she said.

(Reporting by Norma Galeana; Editing by Sandra Stojanovic, Karishma Singh and Gerry Doyle)

Pentagon to deploy 1,100 troops to help COVID-19 vaccination efforts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday announced that the Pentagon had approved the deployment of 1,100 active-duty troops to assist with COVID-19 vaccination efforts in the United States, a number likely to rise in the coming weeks and months.

The pandemic has killed more than 447,000 Americans and thrown millions out of work.

Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House’s COVID-19 response team, said in a briefing that part of the group would start to arrive in California within the next 10 days.

The Pentagon said the 1,110 troops would be broken down into five teams, each with vaccinators, nurses and clinical staff.

The deployment is likely just the first tranche of U.S. military personnel assisting in administering vaccinations around the country.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain last week said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was working with the Pentagon to use 10,000 troops and open 100 centers across the country to increase the availability of vaccines.

Using the military to fight the coronavirus is not new. At its peak under former President Donald Trump, more than 47,000 National Guard troops were supporting COVID-19 operations and about 20,000 continue to help.

The Army Corps of Engineers has also built thousands of rooms across the country to assist hospitals with the strain caused by the spread of the coronavirus.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Dan Grebler)

California to lift stay-at-home orders on Monday: report

(Reuters) – California is expected to lift its regional stay-at-home orders across the state on Monday, moving counties back into the tier-based reopening framework, local media reported.

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office has decided to lift the orders as ICU availability in the regions that remained under the stay-at-home order, including the Bay area and Southern California are projected to rise above the 15% threshold that triggered the lockdown measures, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

According to the report, counties will move back to the tiered system, with most regions across the state expected to move into the purple tier, meaning personal care services like hair salons can re-open with modifications and restaurants can open for outdoor service.

California, the United States’ most populous state, emerged as a leading U.S. epicenter of the pandemic despite re-imposing some of the most stringent restrictions on social gatherings and business activity.

Total cases in the United States crossed 25 million on Sunday, even as states accelerate their vaccine distribution. California has reported over 3.1 million cases and 36,745 deaths so far, a Reuters tally showed.

But the number of new infections appear to be slowing after a surge following the Holiday season.

The state’ top health official said earlier this month that the number of hospitalized coronavirus patients statewide had steadily declined, showing signs of the virus leveling off.

Strict stay-at-home orders were renewed for much of California in December to avert a crisis in hospitals.

(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya with additional reporting by Anurag Maan in Bengaluru; Editing by Toby Chopra)

U.S. tops 10 million COVID vaccinations as California expands eligibility for shots

By Peter Szekely and Dan Whitcomb

(Reuters) – More than 10 million Americans had received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of Wednesday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the year-old pandemic roared on unchecked.

The United States reached 10.2 million inoculations one day after the CDC and Trump administration gave new guidance to U.S. states on who should receive the shots first. Strict rules putting healthcare workers first in line had slowed the rollout. Now states are urged to vaccinate anyone over 65 as well.

California moved on Wednesday to do just that, designating all individuals 65 and older eligible to begin receiving vaccines, adding 6.6 million people to the rolls of those qualified to be immunized, Governor Gavin Newsom said.

The move bumps senior citizens, regardless of whether they have underlying medical conditions, to the top of the priority list for vaccine recipients, just behind front-line healthcare workers and residents and staff of nursing homes.

California, like many states, has struggled to use up as much vaccine as it received in initial allotments from the federal government, administering only about a third of the nearly 2.5 million doses shipped to the state as of Monday.

Newsom has set a goal of inoculating 1 million more Californians by the end of this week with the first shot of the two-dose vaccine.

He also said the state would launch a new system next week for notifying people when they become eligible for the vaccine, and to register for notification by email or text.

The latest push to spur the most ambitious mass immunization campaign in U.S. history came as the nation set a new record for coronavirus deaths in one day, with 4,336 fatalities on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Tuesday said the administration was releasing its full stockpile of two vaccines approved for emergency use, including some that had been held in reserve to make sure that second doses could be given on schedule.

Nearly 30 million doses of the vaccines, manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer with its German partner BioNTech, have been released to U.S. states, which have used only about one-third of them.

Johnson & Johnson said on Wednesday that the pharmaceutical company was on track to roll out its single-shot vaccine in March.

In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Dr. Paul Stoffels also said J&J expected to meet its stated target of delivering 1 billion doses of its vaccine by the end of this year as the company ramps up production.

Political leaders and health officials nationwide have scrambled in recent days to push out more vaccines to their residents, many lowering the age requirement to 65. California and New York have both pledged to inoculate one million residents this month.

NEW YORK SEEKS MORE VACCINE

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, said on Wednesday that short supplies of the vaccine could hamper efforts to reach the city’s inoculation goals.

“We need the federal government, the state government and the manufacturers to step up and get us more supply immediately,” de Blasio told a news conference.

The nation’s most populous city is adding vaccination sites across its five boroughs, including its two Major League Baseball stadiums.

“I confirmed with our healthcare team yesterday that even with normal supplies that we expect to have delivered next week, we will run out of vaccine at some point next week, unless we get a major new resupply,” de Blasio said.

Public health officials say so far no U.S. state has used up its supply of the vaccines.

At the Javits Center in Manhattan, which was pressed into service as a temporary hospital in April, health officials said they were prepared to vaccinate 10,000 people in 12 hours, with the ability to ramp up to 25,000 in a 24-hour period.

New York has recorded nearly 40,000 coronavirus fatalities since the pandemic broke out there in March, more than any other U.S. state.

Nationwide more than 380,000 people have died of COVID-19. A total of 22.7 million have been infected during that time.

The number of COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization may have leveled off at least temporarily, according to a Reuters tally, although public health officials warned that further spread may still be seen from holiday gatherings.

California, the nation’s most populous state, has seen new hospitalizations drop this week, according to health officials. More than 30,000 Californians have so far died of COVID-19 related illness.

The recent emergence of a more infectious variant of the virus first seen in the United Kingdom has made efforts to accelerate vaccinations all the more important. The so-called UK variant has so far been confirmed in at least 10 U.S. states.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely and Andrew Hofstetter in New York, Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Dan Whitcomb and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Alistair Bell and Catherine Evans)

U.S. sets COVID-19 death record for second week, cases surge

(Reuters) – The United States lost more than 22,000 lives to COVID-19 last week, setting a record for the second week in a row, as new cases also hit a weekly high.

California was the state with the most deaths at 3,315 in the week ended Jan. 10, or about eight out of every 100,000 people, up 44% from the prior week, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports.

Arizona had the highest death rate per capita at 15 per 100,000 residents, followed by Rhode Island at 13 and West Virginia at 12 deaths per 100,000 people.

On average, COVID-19 killed 3,239 people per day in the United States last week, more than the number killed by the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Cumulatively, nearly 375,000 people in the country have died from the novel coronavirus, or one in every 873 residents. The total could rise to more than 567,000 by April 1, according to a forecast from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

The United States reported more than 1.7 million new cases of COVID-19 last week, up 17% from the prior seven days. Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief Scott Gottleib said new cases could start declining in February.

“By the end of this month, we’ll have infected probably about 30% of the American public and maybe vaccinated another 10%, notwithstanding the very difficult rollout of the vaccine,” Gottleib told CNBC on Friday. “You’re starting to get to levels of prior exposure in the population where the virus isn’t going to spread as readily.”

Across the United States, 13.4% of tests came back positive for the virus, down from 13.6% the prior week, according to data from the volunteer-run COVID Tracking Project. The highest rates were in Iowa at 59%, Idaho at 54% and Alabama at 45%.

(Graphic by Chris Canipe, writing by Lisa Shumaker, editing by Tiffany Wu)

‘My second life’: California nurse walks out of hospital after 8-month COVID-19 ordeal

By Steve Gorman

LONG BEACH, Calif. (Reuters) – As a veteran ICU nurse whose job is to care for the most critically ill patients at her hospital in Long Beach, California, Merlin Pambuan was well aware of the deadly ravages COVID-19 can inflict on the human body.

Last spring in a tragic role reversal, Pambuan became one of those patients – admitted to the intensive care unit of St. Mary Medical Center, her workplace for the past 40 years, where she was rendered unconscious by paralysis-inducing sedation and placed on a ventilator to breathe. A feeding tube was later added.

She came close to death on several occasions, her doctors later revealed. So dire was her condition at one point that end-of-life options were discussed with her family.

By the time she awoke and could breathe on her own again, she was too weak to stand. But she fought back and struggled through weeks of painful therapy to regain her strength and mobility, celebrating her 66th birthday in St. Mary’s acute rehabilitation ward in late October.

On Monday Pambuan beat the odds of her eight-month ordeal by walking out the front door of the hospital, drawing cheers, applause and exhilaration from colleagues lining the lobby to rejoice in her discharge.

“This is my second life,” Pambuan said moments earlier, as she prepared to leave her hospital room, accompanied by her husband, Daniel, 63, and their daughter, Shantell, 33, an aspiring social worker who spent months at her mother’s bedside as her patient advocate and personal cheerleader.

The spectacle of Pambuan striding slowly but confidently through the hospital lobby – she had insisted on making her exit without assistance of a wheelchair or walker, although was still connected to supplementary oxygen – marked a transformative victory for the diminutive but tough ICU nurse.

‘WHAT WE LIVE FOR’

The outpouring of affection she received from colleagues – including many of the physicians, fellow nurses and therapists who took part in her care – also reflected a rare moment of communal triumph for the pandemic-weary hospital staff.

“This is what we live for … seeing our patients going home alive and in good condition,” said Dr. Maged Tanios, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at St. Mary. He said Pambuan’s recovery was especially rewarding since she is part of the hospital’s extended “family.”

Tanios said he was not aware of other St. Mary medical staff being admitted to the ICU for COVID. However, studies show frontline healthcare workers’ frequent, close contact with coronavirus patients puts them at higher risk of contracting the disease, hence the decision to give them top priority in getting immunized.

Pambuan’s discharge, ironically, coincided with the recent rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to medical workers, as well as a crushing surge in coronavirus infections that have overwhelmed hospitals, and ICUs in particular, across California.

Pambuan said she has no recollection of the four months she spent hooked to a breathing machine – from early May to early September – but recalls first waking up from deep sedation unable to move her extremities.

With encouragement from nursing staff and her daughter Pambuan said she grew determined to regain her mobility and her life.

“I said, ‘No, I’m going to fight this COVID,'” she recounted. “I start moving my hand (and) a physical therapist come and say, ‘Oh, you’re moving your hands,’ and I said, ‘Oh, I’m going to fight, I’m going to fight. I’m trying to wiggle my toes. I’m going to fight it.'”

Pambuan spent the last few months of her hospital stay undergoing physical and respiratory rehabilitation and will continue recuperation from home, while making peace, she said, with a change in pace.

“It’s going to be very difficult for me,” she said. “But I have to accept it, that I’m going to be on oxygen for a while and slow down a little bit.”

When or if she will return to work in the ICU remains an open question, she said.

In the meantime, Pambuan said she feels indebted to her co-workers for their “really professional” care, grateful for the support of loved ones and newly convinced of the power of optimism.

Her message to others in her shoes – “Don’t lose hope. Just fight. Fight, because look at me, you know. I’m going home and I’m walking.”

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Long Beach, California; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

No intensive care beds for most Californians as COVID-19 surges

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) -There are no intensive care beds available in densely populated Southern California or the state’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley, together home to nearly 30 million people, amid a deadly surge of COVID-19, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Monday.

The pandemic is crushing hospitals in the most-populous U.S. state, even as the U.S. government and two of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains began a nationwide campaign on Monday to vaccinate nursing home residents against the highly contagious respiratory disease.

The U.S. death toll from the virus has accelerated in recent weeks to 2,627 per day on a seven-day average, according to a Reuters tally.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has said U.S. COVID-19 deaths will peak in January, when its widely cited model projects that more than 100,000 people will die as the toll marches to nearly 562,000 by April 1.

Nationwide, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients on Monday stood at nearly 113,400, near a record high of over 114,200 set on Friday, according to a Reuters tally.

In California, Newsom told a remote news conference he had requested help from nurses, doctors and medical technicians in the U.S. military, and is hoping that 200 people can be deployed. The state has also sent nearly 700 additional medical staff to beleaguered hospitals, and opened up clinics in unused state buildings, a closed sports arena and other locations.

California Secretary of Health and Human Services Mark Ghaly said many hospitals in the state may also soon run out of room for patients who need to be admitted but do not require intensive care.

Ghaly told the news conference the current surge was related to gatherings that took place over the Thanksgiving holiday and that a similar surge is expected after Christmas and New Year’s, he said.

Newsom pleaded with Californians to comply with stay-at-home orders that restrict activity in most but not all of the state. “We are not victims of fate,” he said.

The governor added that the strain of the virus ravaging California was not the new, highly contagious version emerging in the UK, Newsom said.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Peter Cooney)

California bans private gatherings, New York expands hospitals to battle coronavirus surge

By Dan Whitcomb and Maria Caspani

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) -California compelled much of the state to close shop and stay home on Monday and New York ordered hospitals to increase bed capacity by 25 percent, as the United States braced for yet another coronavirus surge during the upcoming holidays.

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s order came into effect one day after the state set a record with more than 30,000 new COVID-19 cases, triggered in areas of Southern California where fewer than 15% of intensive care hospital beds remain available.

In addition, five counties in Northern California surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area have voluntarily imposed the restrictions even before reaching the intensive care unit threshold. Combined, the areas cover about three-quarters of the state’s nearly 40 million people.

Dr. Celine Gounder said California had little choice. “Given how out of control the virus is at this point, we are having to dial up some of those restrictions again,” Gounder told CBS News. “Ideally, we should be more proactive than this.”

In reporting more than 30,000 new cases on Sunday, the state exceeded its previous high of 21,986 set on Dec. 4, and notched a record high for hospitalized COVID-19 patients as well.

Nationwide, COVID-19 infections in United States are at their peak with an average of 193,863 new cases reported each day over the past week, according to a Reuters tally of official data.

There have been 14.7 million confirmed infections and 282,253 coronavirus-related deaths reported in the country since the pandemic began, the most in the world.

California has been under a stay-at-home order for all but essential services since March. The new order, which will last at least three weeks, bans private gatherings of any size, shuts all but critical infrastructure and retail operations, and requires everyone to wear a mask and maintain physical distancing.

But the sheriffs of Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties have said they will refuse to enforce the order.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said in a videotaped message that his office “will not be blackmailed” into enforcing the governor’s orders, and Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said in a statement his deputies would not respond to calls to enforce violations of the mask mandate, stay-at-home orders or the ban on social gatherings.

FAUCI SEES ‘BAD TIME’ AHEAD

To avoid a critical shortage of hospital beds, New York state health officials will order hospitals to increase their capacity by 25% and ask retired doctors and nurses to come back to work, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday.

If the hospitalization rate fails to stabilize over the next five days, indoor dining in New York City will be halted, Cuomo said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci warned the nationwide surge could get worse after the year-end holiday season.

After millions ignored expert advice and traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday in November, Fauci anticipated Americans would once again behave recklessly during Christmas and New Year’s Eve festivities.

Spikes in the death toll typically appear about three weeks after surges in infections and hospitalizations.

“Mid-January is probably going to be a bad time,” said Fauci, appearing with Cuomo in his video news conference.

Anticipating U.S. Food and Drug Administration emergency authorization of the first vaccine within the coming days, the White House will host a vaccine distribution summit on Tuesday with governors, retail pharmacy chains and shipping companies, Health Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News.

The aim of the meeting was “to be very transparent and show the world how comprehensively we have planned out every aspect of this distribution,” Azar said.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb, Maria Caspani, Doina Chiacu, Lisa Lambert, Peter Szekely and Daniel Trotta; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)

Fire sweeps through Southern California canyon, residents flee

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A blaze that ignited overnight in a single-family home injured two firefighters and forced residents of a rustic Southern California canyon to flee their homes on Thursday, as flames tore across some 4,000 acres of dry brush and wooded hillsides.

The Bond Fire, which broke out at about 10 p.m. on Wednesday night, was driven through Silverado Canyon in Orange County by gusty Santa Ana winds. Authorities issued evacuation warnings to thousands of people.

“There were two firefighters that were injured while battling the Bond Fire this afternoon,” the Orange County Fire Authority said on Twitter. “They were treated by firefighter paramedics and transported to a hospital for further care.”

The woodsy canyon, miles from Southern California’s suburban sprawl and reached by a single winding road, is home to an eclectic mix of residents including artists, horse owners and ranchers.

Some 500 firefighters aided by water-dropping aircraft battled the flames, which sent smoke drifting across Orange and Los Angels counties, but had not achieved any containment as of mid-afternoon on Thursday.

Fire managers said they believed homes and other structures had been damaged by the blaze but could not yet provide details. Power was knocked out to some 50,000 homes across the region.

The Red Cross set up an evacuation point at a community college near the mouth of the canyon.

Since the start of the year, wildfires have scorched more than 6,500 square miles (17,000 square km) of California land according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The state has grappled with fires of record-breaking intensity and size in recent years and 2020 has been particularly difficult.

“We’re in December and we now have active wildfires still in our state,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said at a press briefing. “These Santa Ana winds have been quite intense.”

The yearly land area burned by severe wildfires in the western United States has grown eight times larger in less than four decades, the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station said in research published last month.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis, Diane Craft and Tom Brown)