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Experts estimate local and state health departments will have to hire 100,000 to 300,000 people as contact tracers to get the economy back on track. Many states are trying hard to hire from the racial and ethnic minority communities hit hardest by the virus.
Xavier Becerra has made battling health care consolidation a priority since he became attorney general. Now that COVID-19 threatens vulnerable health care practices, he’s pushing to expand his authority to slow health care mergers.
Safety-net health care programs that keep low-income Californians out of nursing homes are on the chopping block as Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers attempt to plug a massive budget deficit caused by the COVID-19 emergency.
As a journalist, she wrote during the winter about the hostility shown toward Asian Americans for wearing masks. In May, she got cursed at for not wearing a mask herself.
As reopening decisions approach for the fall semester, colleges and universities are casting about for strategies to keep students safe without bankrupting their institutions. A few have natural advantages.
Transit ridership has plummeted because of COVID-19, but millions of Americans still rely on buses and trains to get around, often because they have no other choice.
The pandemic has forced millions of families to weigh the risks of vulnerable grandparents getting too close to their beloved grandchildren — against the heartache of staying away.
The pandemic offers an opportunity to use artificial intelligence programs to help doctors in COVID-19 diagnosis. But some leading hospital systems have shelved their AI technology because it wasn’t ready to roll.
Accident deaths are typically the biggest source of donor organs nationwide. But when the coronavirus forced Californians indoors, accidents declined.
Children’s hospitals were generally in good shape before COVID-19, but now their revenues are plunging as beds they reserved to assist in the pandemic effort remain empty.
Poverty is real in the Coachella Valley, a region known for its glitzy resorts and music festival. During the COVID crisis, the California National Guard and California Conservation Corps are helping an area food bank distribute food to older residents and those with disabilities.
The novel coronavirus is affecting black Americans disproportionately, which some community leaders and public health experts say is not surprising. So why didn’t anyone sound an alarm?
From cafeteria staff to doctors and nurses, hospital workers around the country report frustrating failures by management to notify them when they have been exposed to co-workers or patients known to be infected with COVID-19.
Even as COVID-19 has ravaged nursing homes around the country, California has managed to keep the virus at bay at its eight state-run homes for frail and older veterans. What exactly went right?
Los Angeles is the first big U.S. city to offer COVID-19 testing to anyone who wants it. Will it help restore normal life to the 10 million residents of the city and surrounding county?
Emergency department volumes are down 40 to 50 percent across the country. Doctors worry a new wave of cardiac patients is headed their way — people who have delayed care and will be sicker and more injured when they finally seek care.
Nursing homes with COVID-19 infections tend to violate health rules more often and have more complaints and fines, records show. But infections also plague highly rated facilities — while sparing some low-ranked ones.
“The awful truth is families have no control over what’s happening,” one advocate says.
It’s hard to overstate how uneven access to critical coronavirus test kits remains in the nation’s largest state. Even as some Southern California counties are opening drive-thru sites to make testing available to any resident who wants it, a rural northern county is testing raw sewage to determine whether the coronavirus has infiltrated its communities.
California legislators resume their work Monday after more than a month off. While the coronavirus pandemic has shifted the state’s priorities, many lawmakers say they still intend to push non-COVID health care bills to tax soda, ban vape flavors and more.
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