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Find an updated count of COVID-19 cases in California and by county on our tracker here.
Grand jury finds Sacramento County Board undercut public health response during pandemic
Biden administration gives green light for another COVID-19 booster for people 50 and older
COVID-19 hospitalizations in the US have dropped to their lowest levels
China sends in military to assist with Shanghai lockdown
Trimmed down $10 billion congressional COVID-19 deal is moving forward
1:57 p.m.: Grand jury finds Sacramento County Board undercut public health response during pandemic
A scathing report from the Sacramento County Grand Jury issued Monday afternoon accuses the County Board of Supervisors of ignoring Public Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye’s request for assistance in COVID pandemic response for five months.
The grand jury found that “the Board’s apathy during the most significant public health emergency in over a century, one that impacted every resident of Sacramento County, delayed needed OPH program funding and undercut public health order enforcement.”
The grand jury found that the Officer of Public Health’s COVID response activities should have been the Board of Supervisors’ top priority and recommends that the County Board of Supervisors, the County Executive and the County Office of Public Health jointly develop a public health emergency response plan.
9:43 a.m.: Biden administration gives green light for another COVID-19 booster for people 50 and older
The Biden administration has given the go-ahead for another COVID-19 vaccine booster for people aged 50 and older and certain people who are immunocompromised.
As reported by NPR, they can now get another Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech booster at least four months after their last dose.
But just because you can get an additional booster, does that mean you need to?
Health officials argue that protection provided by the COVID-19 vaccine booster shots wanes over time. And they are concerned about people considered to be at highest risk of getting severe COVID.
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t make it clear how urgently people should be lining up for second boosters. The agency says these groups are “eligible” for the shots, but stopped short of saying if they should get them.
Some infectious disease experts say not everyone in this age group needs another booster shot now.
9:33 a.m.: COVID-19 hospitalizations in the US have dropped to their lowest levels
COVID-19 hospitalization numbers have plunged to their lowest levels since the summer of 2020, offering a much-needed break for health care workers and patients alike following the omicron surge.
According to the Associated Press, the number of patients hospitalized with the coronavirus has fallen more than 90{e9f0aada585b9d73d0d08d3c277fd760092386ec23cac37d50f4b8cd792b062a} in more than two months, and some hospitals are going days without a single COVID-19 patient in the ICU for the first time since early 2020.
The freed-up beds are expected to help U.S. hospitals retain exhausted staff, treat non-COVID-19 patients more quickly and cut down on inflated costs.
More family members can visit loved ones, and doctors hope to see a correction to the slide in pediatric visits, yearly checkups and cancer screenings.
“We should all be smiling that the number of people sitting in the hospital right now with COVID, and people in intensive care units with COVID, are at this low point,” said University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi.
But, he said, the nation “paid a steep price to get to this stage. … A lot of people got sick and a lot of people died.”
9:16 a.m.: China sends in military to assist with Shanghai lockdown
China has sent more than 10,000 health workers from across the country to Shanghai, including 2,000 military medical staff.
According to the Associated Press, they’re struggling to stamp out a rapidly spreading COVID-19 outbreak in China’s largest city.
Shanghai is conducting mass testing of its 25 million residents as what was supposed to be a two-phase lockdown entered its second week.
Many factories and financial firms have been able to keep operating by isolating their employees, but concern is growing about the potential economic impact of an extended lockdown in China’s financial capital, which is also a major shipping and manufacturing center.
10:13 a.m.: Trimmed down $10 billion congressional COVID-19 deal is moving forward
Federal lawmakers have moved to the brink of clinching a scaled-back bipartisan compromise to provide a fresh $10 billion to combat COVID-19.
According to the Associated Press, that could set up final congressional approval next week. The price tag was down from an earlier $15.6 billion agreement between the two parties that collapsed weeks ago after House Democrats rejected cutting unused pandemic aid to states to help pay for it.
President Joe Biden previously requested $22.5 billion in early March. With leaders hoping to move the package through congress quickly, the lowered cost seemed to reflect both parties’ calculations that agreeing soon to additional savings would be too hard.
The effort, which would finance steps like vaccines, treatments and tests, comes as Biden and other Democrats have warned the government is running out of money to counter the pandemic. At the same time, the more transmissible omicron variant, BA.2, has been spreading quickly in the U.S. and abroad.
9:41 a.m.: Easing coronavirus protections could hurt Medicaid recipients and cause significant disruptions to the system, experts say
When the stated end of the COVID-19 pandemic comes, it could create major disruptions for U.S. health care, the Associated Press reports.
Experts say the cumbersome health care system has been made more generous, flexible and up-to-date technologically through a raft of emergency measures.
Winding down those temporary policies could start as early as the summer if the Biden administration ends a federal public health emergency that’s been in effect for over two years.
A change like this would force an estimated 15 million Medicaid recipients to find new sources of coverage and require congressional action to preserve broad telehealth access for Medicare enrollees.
It also would scramble COVID-19 rules and payment policies for hospitals, doctors, insurers and patients.
9:25 a.m.: Shanghai moves into second part of COVID-19 lockdown
About 16 million residents in Shanghai are being tested for the coronavirus as a staged lockdown shifts to the western half of China’s biggest city and financial capital, according to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, eastern districts that were supposed to be ending their lockdown were told it might be extended in spots where COVID-19 cases are found. The lockdown of the city with 26 million people has rattled global markets, worried about the possible economic impact.
Residents sent to designated testing sites were met by long lines and waits of more than 90 minutes. People who are sick are sent to hospitals, and people who test positivity without any symptoms are sent to temporary isolation centers, including gymnasiums.
Find older coronavirus updates on our previous blog page here
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Seashore, water, and lavish resorts! All club together for a heavenly holiday, never you agree? What to say if the trip place is in Cuba?? Nicely, the whole Caribbean is incredibly heat and welcoming though supplying ravishing surroundings and diversity and Cuba is no distinct. …
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How significantly holiday enjoyable can you crowbar into a single 50 percent-term getaway? Actually, bucketsful – if your boarding pass lands you on America’s solar-drenched West Coast. 10 several hours in the sky from the United kingdom to Los Angeles promises great beach cities, significant motion picture studios, thrilling topic parks and some globe-beating wildlife. And whichever expression school split you plump for – February, June or Oct – the sky will nearly surely be blue.
Our multi-generational gang of six (comprising 1 granny, one particular uncle, two youngsters – Belle, eight, and Cleo, six – and my partner and me) are wooed way out west by flights on the right aspect of £300 every.
LA is often much less expensive to get to than the Canaries in college holidays, and any jet-lag we worry melts away promptly, ushered out by Los Angeles’s instant, dazzling sunshine, towering palms and countless honey sands. We forgo the wham-bam of Hollywood’s headline tourist sights (they can wait around a although) and make for individuals awesome beach front towns as a substitute. Pitching up at Newport Seashore, a perfectly-heeled harbour enclave which is 40 minutes’ travel south of the airport, proves just the ticket.
Exhilarating: Joanna Tweedy visits Dana Place (pictured), aka the Dolphin and Whale Observing Capital of the Earth, in the course of her vacation to America’s West Coast
Delectable: Joanna’s family enjoys the renowned frozen bananas served at Sugar N’ Spice in Newport Seashore (pictured)
A regional recommends choosing a ‘duffy’, a plush very little electric powered boat that expenses about £25pp for a day and moves at a blissfully glacial five knots. It is sage tips, and we spend an afternoon in Newport Bay weaving about paddle-boarders, dodging buffleheads (sweet sea ducks that bob alongside upcoming to us) and lusting after palatial waterfront residences. So eclectic in style are these properties, preparing officials plainly follow the ‘anything but boring’ mantra.
The women like the £3.5 million ‘Jaws House’, a futuristic pad that seems like the gaping mouth of a excellent white shark and we look for out the lavish previous properties of Hollywood royalty which include Cyndi Lauper, John Wayne and Shirley Temple.
Back again on terra firma, a stroll down chintzy Marine Travel on Balboa Island sees us join a queue to sample Newport Beach’s snack of selection: the chocolate-dipped frozen banana. The store with the longest line is the delightfully retro Sugar N’ Spice, which lays declare to inventing the £4.50 treat back again in 1945. The kids’ eyes widen at the prospect of ‘Oreo crumbles’ or ‘pecan crunch’ toppings cemented into the melted chocolate. Cleo plumps for the ‘everything’ topping and emerges with a dizzying layer of sprinkles, which she scoffs right before ditching the precise banana.
We want to hold the driving to a least, but liberty and freeways go hand-in-hand in California, so we eventually consider our area on the ever-so-a bit-terrifying 10-lane I-5 South for the half-hour hop to our upcoming prevent – Dana Point, aka the Dolphin and Whale Viewing Funds of the World.
This minimal-essential Orange County city sits accurately midway concerning Los Angeles and San Diego on southern California’s gloriously craggy shoreline. It was anointed a Whale Heritage Web-site in 2021, thanks to the grey, blue, humpback, minke and finbacks that commonly glide into this heat bay, moreover the 450,000 common dolphins that simply call these waters household.
Based in the town’s harbour given that 1971, the Dana Wharf Whale Viewing Organization can take out tourist boats (£40 for grownups, £30 for kids and fifty percent cost on Tuesdays) three periods a day with marine naturalists on board for quizzing.
‘LA is normally cheaper to get to than the Canaries in college vacations,’ writes Joanna. Pictured is the spouse and children, with Joanna in the centre, on bikes at Venice Beach
Rather bufflehead ducks (pictured) bob along with Joanna as she cruises down Newport Bay on a ‘duffy’ boat – ‘plush very little electric powered boat’
There’s no indicator of any humpback straight away, so we just appear, respiratory in the salty air and looking at mild ricochet off the water. And that, of course, is when the magic transpires. Initially occur the dolphins. Like a jaunty circus troupe, they dip and dive all around our tourist boat. Then, just further than them, the little ones spy a additional sizeable monochrome mass. Stretching 40ft, it gently breaks the waters and we out of the blue have the very best seats in the home as a humpback launches by itself skywards once again and once more.
When we pootle again to shore exhilarated, an hour afterwards, the maritime everyday living theatricals really do not abate. A gang of tubby sea lions flop and bark on sunshine-bleached boardwalks as we anchor up.
Sooner or later, Tinseltown’s cinematic heritage lures us inland to LA. The Tangerine, a 1960s motel in an electric powered shade of orange on Burbank’s West Riverside Travel, presents a transform from the beachy vibes. In the shadow of film-producing goliaths these kinds of as Warner Brothers, Common and Disney, this bolthole serves up no cost Cuban pastries for breakfast and lets travellers who’ve invested extended days delving into Hollywood’s film vault great off in its small butter-bean-formed pool.
Our excursion coincides with Belle’s peak Harry Potter adoration, so the prospect of a day at Universal Studios, where the young wizard has a quarter of a theme park focused to him, is joyous.
What excursions of Common – and nearby Warner Brothers – offer you is permission to peel back again the curtain on Hollywood’s film alchemy.
Joanna and her brood shell out a working day at Common Studios Hollywood, the place a quarter of the concept park is committed to Harry Potter. Pictured is the Hogwarts Castle from the fantasy series
At Warner Brothers, our guidebook, Joshua, is a male whose film trivia cup runneth in excess of. Want to know how tall Aquaman is? (6ft 4in.) Or what impressed the Batmobile in the Darkish Knight Trilogy? (It is effectively the lovechild of a Lamborghini and a tank.) He’s your man.
We even squeeze in some lifestyle – investing the hours in advance of our flight household perusing the head-bending reveals at the Getty Museum in glitzy Bel Air.
‘This is wonderful’, claims Granny. ‘This is monotonous,’ say the little ones.