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California Watch

News stories in this section spotlight activities in California, including actions by the state Assembly and state Senate; proposed legislation; regulators like the Department of Managed Health Care and Department of Insurance; and the state ACA exchange, Covered California.

COVID-19 Numbers Drop Once Again Across California. Is The Summer Surge Finally Easing?

COVID-19 numbers continued to drop across California this week, as a case surge that lasted through the summer appears to be easing up. The California Department of Public Health on Friday reported the statewide COVID-19 case rate at 30.6 per 100,000 residents, a 9% decline in the past week. Statewide case rates have steadily declined ...

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California Monkeypox Response Is Bumpy, But Builds On Some Lessons From COVID

Hundreds waiting hours for a monkeypox vaccine only to be turned away. Residents taking to social media to detail struggles getting diagnosed and treated. State and local leaders demanding federal action. Emergency orders declared. At face value, these details paint the picture of a country and state in crisis, struggling to apply lessons learned from ...

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Biggest Polio Threat In Years Sparks Alarms From New York To California

Delays in getting children vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic and antivaccination sentiment in general may be fueling the most serious threat of polio in the U.S. in years, raising alarms from New York to California. In the last few weeks, health officials in New York identified the first person in nearly a decade in the ...

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California Provider And Five Health Plans Adopt Value-Based Primary Care Coalition

The Purchaser Business Group on Health has announced a new primary care agreement with five large payer organizations and with a provider serving California. Aledade, a physician-led ACO, and insurers Aetna, Blue Shield of California, Health Net, Oscar and UnitedHealthcare have signed a memorandum of understanding in the California Advanced Primary Care Initiative. They have agreed to increase investment ...

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Free For All California Public School Students: At Least Two Meals A Day

Students at public schools across California can continue to receive at least two free meals a day at school this academic year, thanks to a state initiative launched during the pandemic. Under California’s Universal Meals Program, all public school students in grades transitional kindergarten through 12, regardless of their parents’ income, are eligible for free ...

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California Unemployment Program Too Focused on Fraud, Failed to Timely Provide Hundreds of Millions of Dollars, Report Finds

California’s unemployment system is too focused on rooting out fraud and minimizing business costs than providing people with timely benefits, according to a new report from the state.

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S.F. All But Gives Up On Contact Tracing For Monkeypox

San Francisco has demanded more vaccines and treatment options for its escalating cases of monkeypox — but the city has all but abandoned a time-honored method of containing outbreaks: contact tracing.U.S. health officials declared monkeypox a national health emergency last week, as did California and San Francisco city officials, and although it’s typically non-fatal, no one ...

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California Fair Pay and Employer Accountability Act Qualifies for 2024 Ballot

The Secretary of State has announced that the California Fair Pay and Employer Accountability Act qualified for the 2024 ballot on the random sample count of signatures. The initiative’s campaign submitted 962,217 signatures in support of the reform, meeting the 110% validity rate threshold The ballot measure will put workers’ labor claims back in the ...

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California Governor Declares Monkeypox State Of Emergency As Cases Climb

California's governor has declared a state of emergency to speed efforts to combat the monkeypox outbreak, becoming the second state in three days to take the step.

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COVID: Reinfections account for 50,000 California cases this month. Here’s how that number is rising

Have you had COVID a second time? Or a third? If so, you are in good company. New data from California’s public health department show that in the first three weeks of July there were more than 50,000 documented reinfections, accounting for 1 in 7 new COVID cases through the middle of the month. And, ...

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