COVID-19

We’ve been waiting for this week for a long time. After more than a year of complex, evolving rules governing where Californians can go and what we can do, on Tuesday, nearly all of them will go away. California, the nation’s most populous state, will be...

CALIFORNIA — Before state officials announced that 40% of California's new vaccine doses would go to low-income communities, leaders were struggling to make good on promises to prioritize vulnerable Californians in the vaccine rollout. As my colleague Miriam Jordan recently wrote, farmworkers were among those...

CALIFORNIA — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday announced that the state is “setting our eyes on fully reopening by June 15 — with commonsense measures like masking.” Newsom made the announcement via Twitter, and reiterated the state’s plan to eventually forgo the current four-tiered,...

MONTEREY COUNTY — The case rate metrics are not yet at a point where Monterey County can shift from the Orange Tier to the less-restrictive Yellow Tier, but county Health Officer Dr. Edward Moreno said the overall pattern observed is a positive trend toward...

MONTEREY COUNTY — Federal, state and county agencies, including Cal Coastal, continue to offer assistance to local businesses, with two new programs having recently begun to help them bounce back from the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Cindy Merzon, director of Cal Coastal’s Small Business...

MONTEREY COUNTY — Monterey County officials have already started planning the next phases of Covid-19 vaccine distribution and recipient prioritization after distributing the first round of vaccines last month. “Monterey County will have, to date, an allocation totaling 12,550 vaccines that includes both the Moderna...

CALIFORNIA — Dozens of times a day in COVID-19 wards across California, a scene like this plays out: A hospital chaplain watches as a death is announced by machine. Kristin Michealsen, a hospital chaplain in Los Angeles, stood at a man’s bedside, holding his hand....

Even though the pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll on people of color and on low-income communities, Americans in wealthier counties have been getting vaccinated against the coronavirus at higher rates than those who live in more distressed, impoverished counties, federal health researchers reported...

CALIFORNIA — California will roll back its mask requirement next week for vaccinated residents in most indoor spaces, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday. The state implemented the mandate in mid-December as COVID-19 cases began to spike due to the highly infectious omicron variant, requiring residents...

Previous infection with the coronavirus appeared to provide stronger protection against the delta variant than did vaccination in a large sample of patients, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. But in the long term, vaccination still offers the best defense against the...