Tag: California

Hospitals across California have all but run out of intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients, ambulances are backing up outside emergency rooms, and tents for triaging the sick are going up as the nation’s most populous state emerges as the latest epicenter of the U.S. outbreak.

Governor Gavin Newsom today announced the selection of California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to be California’s next United States Senator, filling the term being vacated by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Padilla, who previously served as a Los Angeles City Councilman and State Senator, and is a national leader in the fight to expand voting rights, will become the first Latino to represent California in the United States Senate and the first Southern Californian in nearly three decades.

California has recorded a half-million coronavirus cases in the last two weeks and in a month could be facing a once-unthinkable caseload of nearly 100,000 hospitalizations, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state's top health official said Monday.

The first COVID-19 vaccinations are underway at U.S. nursing homes, where the virus has killed more than 110,000 people, even as the nation struggles to contain a surge so alarming it has spurred California to dispense thousands of body bags and line up refrigerated morgue trucks.

As coronavirus surges out of control across California with an average of more than 31,000 cases reported a day, Gov. Gavin Newsom applauded Monday as he watched an intensive care unit nurse in Los Angeles receive one of the first doses of vaccine in the state.