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.
California lawmakers are wasting little time debating the $227 billion budget proposal Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week. In a break with the normally slow-moving process that drags out for months, budget committees in both the Assembly and state Senate convened this week to review the governor's spending plan, which includes immediate financial relief to families and businesses hard hit by the pandemic.
California lifted a stay-at-home order in the 13-county Sacramento region on Tuesday as hospital conditions improved, a rare turn of good news as the state pushes through what Gov. Gavin Newsom called “its most intense surge” of the coronavirus. The order imposed Dec. 10 banned gatherings outside a household and shuttered or restricted many businesses. ...
As the total number of coronavirus infections in California approaches 3 million, health officials said Sunday that a new strain — different from a highly contagious variant first identified in the United Kingdom — is popping up more frequently across the state. Researchers have identified the strain in a dozen counties and have linked it ...
California on Monday became the first state to record more than 3 million known coronavirus infections. The grim milestone, as tallied by Johns Hopkins University, wasn’t entirely unexpected in a state with 40 million residents but its speed stunning. The state only reached 2 million reported cases on Dec. 24. The first coronavirus case in ...
Health officials in California are telling medical providers across the state not to administer doses from one lot of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine while they investigate possible severe allergic reactions last week in a number of people who got shots at a community vaccination clinic. More than 330,000 doses from the lot were distributed to 287 ...
The coronavirus pandemic doomed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ambitious plans last year to combat homelessness, expand behavioral health services and create a state agency to control soaring health care costs.
In an effort to avoid wasting COVID-19 vaccine and help speed up the vaccine rollout, the state is instructing local health departments and providers to expand vaccine prioritization to community healthcare workers, public health field staff, primary care clinics, specialty clinics, laboratory workers, dental clinics and pharmacy staff. The state has also told officials that ...
California hospitals struggling with a skyrocketing coronavirus surge are trying to prepare for the possibility that they may have to ration care for lack of staff and beds — and hoping they don’t have to make that choice. The state avoided surging cases for months, but now the virus is raging out of control there ...
Only about 35% of the COVID-19 vaccine doses that have arrived in California have been administered so far, a rate Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged Monday was “not good enough” as he pledged new funding and efforts aimed at ramping up the rollout.
Sacramento health care workers and nursing home residents have been receiving COVID-19 vaccines since last week, and county health departments are beginning to make plans for wider distribution. But health officials say it will still be several months before the general public is lining up for shots. California has mapped out several phases of vaccine ...