California on total lockdown full#

An investigation found that some properties held by the state’s largest owner of nursing homes aren’t licensed, and their applications have been pending for years. The licensing process for California’s nursing homes can be exceedingly complicated and rife with indecision.

Many said that bureaucratic hurdles, complicated by limited phone or internet access, were insurmountable.

Many people living in homeless shelters and on the street have not received the federal stimulus checks they’re entitled to. San Diego Health’s chief information officer, predicted “continued frustration as more people become eligible but supply is not available to meet demand.”Įxperts have also criticized the process for allowing poorer and harder-hit communities to be bypassed, even while state officials have repeatedly said equity is a “North Star.”Īdvocates have said that in California - where leaders are painfully aware of the divides between the state’s wealthiest, often whitest, communities and its poorest communities, often home to predominantly Latino essential workers - both speed and precision should be priorities in the distribution of vaccines.Ī prosecutor filed 33 charges against PG&E, including recklessly causing a fire that injured six firefighters, for its role in the Kincade Fire north of San Francisco in 2019. When state officials recently announced that the state would expand vaccine eligibility to anyone 16 and older starting April 15, Dr. Now, as the focus has turned to the state’s vaccine rollout, Californians have been frustrated with what they’ve seen as a confusing and chaotic effort. By December, hospitals - especially in hard-hit areas, like Los Angeles - were overwhelmed with patients, and the state ordered Californians to stay at home again. Newsom and other state leaders emphasized that the state needed to have the ability to quickly reimpose emergency measures if hospitals started to fill up.Īround Thanksgiving, there were signs that public health officials’ worst fears would be realized. They’ve been both widely criticized as confusing and credited with saving uncounted lives. The Newsom administration’s reopening strategies changed frequently and have been implemented piecemeal across the state’s 58 counties.

California on total lockdown full#

Since then, California has toggled among various levels of restriction as cases have surged, receded and then surged again, overwhelming hospitals in the winter, even as other states have allowed full reopenings. Over the past year, California has become a high-profile case study of the ways in which reopening a vast economy can be more complex, unequal and politically fraught than shutting one down.Ĭalifornia was the first state to implement a stay-at-home order last year, on March 19, plunging the state’s 40 million residents into the nation’s largest experiment in preventing transmission of the virus. The state will, however, keep in place a mask mandate for the foreseeable future, and there will be some limits on large indoor events or conventions of more than 5,000 people at least until fall.