Although younger people are hospitalized and die less frequently than their elders when infected with COVID-19, their cases are harder to trace. As a result, the virus is spreading uncontrollably throughout much of Southern California. Even hospital staffs are affected by community spread.
Some districts want to bring everyone back to the classroom and some are planning distance-only learning, while most others are settling on one of a variety of options in the middle. Whatever their leanings, they all face vast, troubling uncertainty.
Even as most U.S. states and authorities reimpose many of the restrictions they had prematurely lifted, public health experts say you can still have a safe social life — just not the one you were used to before the pandemic hit.
Unlike earlier in the year, most hospitals are not proactively canceling elective surgeries, even in some places seeing spikes in coronavirus patients.
Executions have been on hold in California since 2006, stalled by a series of legal challenges. But COVID-19 is proving a lethal presence on San Quentin’s death row.
Health care workers on the front lines of the COVID crisis have spent exhausting months working and self-quarantining off-duty to keep from infecting others, including their families. Encountering people who indignantly refuse face coverings can feel like a slap in the face.
For three years, staffers at UCLA Health have been quietly fulfilling final wishes for dying patients in the intensive care unit. Amid the isolating forces of the pandemic, their work has become all the more meaningful.
California Healthline’s Samantha Young helped lead a discussion about the state’s response to the novel coronavirus. Infections and hospitalizations are surging across the state.
Local governments around the country are declaring racism a public health crisis. That could be lip service, or it might lead to shifting resources from policing to health care, housing and other services, experts say.
Public health officials have been alarmed by the increase in COVID-19 cases linked to family gatherings and socializing. While Gov. Gavin Newsom is defending the state’s reopening, local health officials worry the situation could get worse this summer.
