Tag Archives: California

Kids, safety and schools: A pandemic debate plays out in California county

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – In Sutter County in California’s bucolic Sacramento Valley, coronavirus cases are rising, but Mike Ziegenmeyer wants his kids back in the classroom.

Unlike big-city school districts that plan to offer only remote learning this fall as COVID-19 rages through the state, several school districts in this agricultural region – once part of the 19th century gold rush – intend to accommodate that wish.

“I want my kids in school,” said Ziegenmeyer, a county supervisor and political conservative. “I think they need the social interaction.”

Ziegenmeyer, at least for now, will get his wish. The tiny Brittan School District where his three children attend class plans to bring students back to the classroom.

But opposition by some other parents in the county shows how Sutter County is a microcosm of a debate raging across California and the United States of whether it is safe to reopen schools amid a resurgent wave of coronavirus cases.

Cases started rising sharply in Sutter, as elsewhere in California, at the beginning of June and have continued to climb, increasing from about 75 cases to nearly 700. At least 17 people from Sutter, with a population of 97,000 and just a few hospital beds, were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of July 16, and 378 are currently ill, county data show.

Like so many of the controversies related to the pandemic, the school issue has become increasingly politicized. Republican President Donald Trump has been urging a return to regular school schedules, while many Democrats advocate a more cautious approach, such as continuing with the virtual lessons widely introduced when the spreading pandemic forced a sudden shutdown of schools in the spring.

Ziegenmeyer resents what he says is a heavy-handed approach by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who early this week put the brakes on the reopening of California’s economy as he reversed orders that had allowed many businesses to open their doors again. On Friday Newsom will release new guidelines on reopening schools.

Ziegenmeyer is also concerned parents will suffer economic harm if they can’t work because children are home from school.

HYBRID MODEL

In California, many large urban districts, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento, have said they will begin the academic year with remote instruction. But plans vary from county to county, and from one school district to another.

The board of the Yuba City Unified School District, Sutter’s county seat and its largest municipality with 67,000 residents, voted last week to reopen with traditional instruction, five days per week.

The move, which was against the superintendent’s recommendation, stunned parents and teachers expecting either remote learning or a hybrid model, under which children attend small classes for part of the week, with strict social distancing. The teachers union began tense negotiations on Thursday over the plan.

“It is my hope that they will change their minds,” said Dina Luetgens, president of the Yuba City Teachers Association, which wants a hybrid model under which only half the district’s students would be on campus at a time.

In-person instruction, even under such a model, would require careful planning and protective gear for teachers as well as students, she said. Without that, teachers and children would be safer studying remotely from home, she said.

The school district did not respond to requests for comment. But Superintendent Doreen Osumi told the local Appeal-Democrat newspaper the district would have to implement social distancing guidelines and require children to wear face coverings. Parents who do not wish to send their children back to school will be allowed to choose a remote learning plan, although it was not immediately clear how it would be organized.

Sutter County is no stranger to not following the crowd. In May, Sutter, neighboring Yuba and Modoc counties defied state restrictions aimed at controlling the coronavirus spread and allowed restaurants, retail stores and fitness centers to reopen even though it was prohibited by state guidelines.

The guidelines Newsom is expected to release on Friday could upend plans to reopen school campuses. But even if reopening continues, Leslie Gundy says she will not send her two children back to school in Yuba City.

“We are in no way prepared to do that,” said Gundy, whose husband is a teacher in the district. “There’s been too little communication about their plan and how they are going to keep my children safe – and our teachers safe.”

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler)

Rose Parade in California canceled for first time in 76 years due to coronavirus

(Reuters) – The 2021 Tournament of Roses Parade, an annual spectacle held each New Year’s Day since 1891 in Pasadena, California, has been called off due to the coronavirus pandemic, its first cancellation in 76 years, organizers said on Wednesday.

The Rose Parade, an internationally televised procession of flower-bedecked floats, marching bands and equestrian teams, has only been canceled three other times in its history – during the World War Two years of 1942, ’43 and ’45.

“With reluctance and tremendous disappointment, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association announces that, in accordance with Governor (Gavin) Newsom’s Phase IV re-opening schedule, and after thoughtful consideration of the restrictions and guidelines in place as a result of COVID-19, we are unable to host the 2021 Rose Parade,” the association said in a statement.

While the 132nd edition of the parade itself was still five months away, preparation for the event typically begins in February.

The Tournament of Roses Association also hosts the Rose Bowl football game each Jan. 1, and planning for this year’s college playoff semifinal is still ongoing, the organization said.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta and Steve Gorman; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Tom Brown)

Living near gas flaring sites may increase risk of preterm birth, study shows

By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Women living near oil and gas production sites where natural gas is flared may be at a higher risk of giving birth preterm, a team of California researchers reported on Wednesday.

Analysis of more than 23,000 birth records from 2012 through 2015 reveals a 50% higher chance of preterm birth for women living within three miles (5 km) of Texas’ Eagle Ford shale basin than for women who lived farther away, according to the study.

“Our study finds that living near flaring is harmful to pregnant women and babies,” said co-author Jill Johnston, an environmental health scientist at the University of Southern California.

The research, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, adds to evidence linking pollution with poorer pregnancy outcomes. Another study in June found a correlation between air pollution or higher outdoor temperatures and increased chances of having a preterm or stillborn baby.

Those findings, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, resulted from analyzing 70 studies covering 32 million births. It also found that black women were disproportionately at risk.

In the new study, by scientists at USC and UCLA, the association between preterm births and flaring proximity was seen only among Hispanic and Latina women, who made up 55% of the study population. No effect was seen among non-Hispanic White women, who comprised 37% of the total. Preterm babies are at higher risk of respiratory and cardiovascular illness, as well as developmental delays.

The team said it was the first to look at birth outcomes in relation to oil and flaring, which has seen a sharp increase in southern Texas’ Eagle Ford and other U.S. shale hubs.

Flares can release chemicals such as benzene, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides, along with fine particulate matter, heavy metals and black carbon.

The U.S. drilling industry flared or vented more natural gas in 2019 for the third year in a row, amid soaring production and a lack of regulatory efforts to curb the practice, according to state data and independent research estimates.

When oil prices are low, or when oil fields lack pipeline access, drillers tend to vent or flare gas, which can burn for weeks at a time.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Katy Daigle and Marguerita Choy)

Three states in U.S. South report record rises in COVID-19 deaths

By Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – Alabama, Florida and North Carolina reported record daily increases in COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday, a trio of grim milestones that follows the first nationwide increase in fatalities since mid-April as some U.S. states rushed to reopen.

The number of new cases reported daily began rising about six weeks ago, especially in southern and western states such as Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, which have been quick to lift restrictions meant to control the spread of the virus.

New coronavirus cases rose in 46 of 50 U.S. states last week over the previous week, according to a Reuters analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project. So far in July, 28 states have reported record daily increases in new cases.

With more than 3.3 million cases, the United States ranks first in the world in cases per capita along with Peru. With more than 135,000 deaths, the United States ranks seventh in fatalities per capita among the 20 countries with the most cases.

Florida on Tuesday reported 133 new COVID-19 deaths, raising the state’s death toll to more than 4,500. Its previous record increase was 120 on July 9. Alabama reported a record increase of 40 deaths and North Carolina 35 deaths, bringing each state’s total to over 1,100.

The rising cases and deaths have left educators from California to Wisconsin opting for online learning rather than a return to classrooms when the school year begins in a few weeks.

Schools from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Fort Bend County, Texas, joined California’s two largest school districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, in announcing plans to keep teachers and students from the close contact that classrooms demand.

The decision puts the districts at odds with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has threatened to withhold federal funds or remove tax-exempt status if they refuse to reopen classrooms, even though most schools are financed by state and local taxes.

Trump’s campaign views the reopening of classrooms, enabling parents to get back to work, as a key to economic recovery and a boost to his re-election chances on Nov. 3.

New York state plans to reopen its schools in areas where the daily infection rate is below 5% of all COVID tests. The state has averaged an infection rate of about 1% for several weeks and is one of only four states where cases fell last week, according to a Reuters analysis. New York City, where social distancing and mask wearing are widely practiced, recently reported no new COVID deaths in a 24-hour period for the first time since March.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday added Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin to the state’s quarantine list. Travelers arriving in New York from a total of 22 U.S. states are now required to quarantine for 14 days.

Florida still plans for its schools to resume in-person learning in August. The state recorded over 9,000 new cases on Tuesday, down from 12,000 on Monday and a record increase of 15,000 on Sunday.

Teachers in Loudoun County, Virginia, protested outside school headquarters on Monday with one woman fully enclosed in a white lab suit and face shield holding a sign that said, “Our new school uniform.” To keep physically distant, the teachers honked their car horns in unison, according to a video.

Faculty members were protesting against a school board plan for hybrid instruction that would include two days of in-person teaching, according to local media.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani and Gabriella Borter in New York; Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Howard Goller)

California shuts down businesses, schools as coronavirus outbreak grows

By Sharon Bernstein and Dan Whitcomb

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) – California’s governor on Monday clamped new restrictions on businesses as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations soared, and the state’s two largest school districts, in Los Angeles and San Diego, said children would be made to stay home in August.

Governor Gavin Newsom ordered bars closed and restaurants, movie theaters, zoos and museums across the nation’s most populous state to cease indoor operations. Gyms, churches and hair salons must close in the 30 hardest-hit counties.

“It’s incumbent upon all of us to recognize soberly that COVID-19 is not going away any time soon, until there is a vaccine and/or an effective therapy,” Newsom said at a news briefing.

The governor called the move critical to stemming a surge in COVID-19 cases that have strained hospitals in several of California’s rural counties.

The public school districts for Los Angeles and San Diego, which instruct a combined 706,000 students and employ 88,000 people, said in a joint statement they would teach only online when school resumes in August, citing “vague and contradictory” science and government guidelines.

The districts said countries that have safely reopened schools have done so only after establishing declining infection rates and on-demand coronavirus testing.

“California has neither,” the statement said, adding, “The sky-rocketing infection rates of the past few weeks make it clear the pandemic is not under control.”

The union representing Los Angeles teachers applauded the strategy in a separate statement released shortly after the school shutdowns were announced.

“In the face of the alarming spike in COVID cases, the lack of necessary funding from the government to open schools safely and the outsized threat of death faced by working-class communities of color, there really is no other choice that doesn’t put thousands of lives at risk,” United Teachers Los Angeles said.

Brenda Del Hierro, who has two children in Los Angeles schools, said resuming traditional instruction was important but the hazards had to be considered. “For their social and emotional well being they need to go back to school. But at the end of the day there is too much of a risk,” she said.

DISTRICTS CLASH WITH TRUMP

The decision to cancel in-person classes puts the districts at odds with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has said he might withhold federal funding or remove tax-exempt status from school systems that refuse to reopen. Most education funding comes from state and local governments.

Administration officials have said data does not suggest attending school would be dangerous for children because their infection rates are far lower than the population at large.

In response to the California districts’ announcement, the White House reiterated that the ideal scenario is for students to go to school. “Hopefully Los Angeles and San Diego can get there soon as well, as that is what is best for children.” spokesman Judd Deer said.

Newsom, who has said during the pandemic that it was up to local school districts to determine how best to educate their students, cheered the announcements by Los Angeles and San Diego.

But Republicans criticized the governor for failing to issue statewide guidelines for schools during the health crisis.

“While he continues to blame Californians for his failure in leadership, his demands to close our small businesses and lack of direction on opening schools will further harm California’s school children and the small businesses that fuel our economy,” Jessica Millan Patterson, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, said in a written statement.

California, along with Florida, Arizona and Texas have emerged as the new U.S. epicenters of the pandemic. Infections have risen rapidly in about 40 of the 50 states over the last two weeks, according to a Reuters analysis.

Despite nearly 28,000 new COVID-19 cases in the last two days in Florida, Disney World in Orlando welcomed the public on Saturday for the first time since March with guests required to wear masks, undergo temperature checks and keep physically apart.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Steve Gorman in Eureka, California, Rich McKay in Atlanta, Lisa Lambert and Doina Chiacu in Washington, and Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Writing by Lisa Shumaker and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Howard Goller, Bill Tarrant and Cynthia Osterman)

Moderna expects to start late-stage COVID-19 vaccine trial on July 27

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Moderna Inc said on Tuesday it plans to start a late stage clinical trial for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate on or around July 27, according to its listing for the phase 3 study at clinicaltrials.gov.

Moderna said it will conduct the trial at 87 study locations, all in the United States.

The experimental vaccine will be tested in 30 states and Washington, D.C. Around half of the study locations are in hard-hit states like Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, Arizona and North and South Carolina.

The United States has reported record numbers of new coronavirus cases in recent days, with much of the surge coming from those states.

The federal government is supporting Moderna’s vaccine project with nearly half a billion dollars and has chosen it as one of the first to enter large-scale human trials.

Tensions between the company and government scientists contributed to a delay of the trial launch, Reuters reported earlier this month.

Shares of Moderna rose about 2.5% on Nasdaq at midday.

(Reporting by Michael Erman, Editing by Franklin Paul and Richard Chang)

15 U.S. states to jointly work to advance electric heavy-duty trucks

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of 15 U.S. states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday unveiled a joint memorandum of understanding aimed at boosting the market for electric medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and phasing out diesel-powered trucks by 2050.

The announcement comes weeks after the California Air Resources Board approved a groundbreaking policy to require manufacturers to sell a rising number of zero-emission vehicles, starting in 2024 and to electrify nearly all larger trucks by 2045.

The 14 states said the voluntary initiative is aimed at boosting the number of electric large pickup trucks and vans, delivery trucks, box trucks, school and transit buses, and long-haul delivery trucks, with the goal of ensuring all new medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sales be zero emission vehicles (ZEV) by 2050 with a target of 30% ZEV sales by 2030.

The states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Vermont.

The states committed to developing a plan within six months to identify barriers and propose solutions to support widespread electrification, including potential financial incentives and ways to boost EV infrastructure.

Trucks and buses represent 4% of U.S. vehicles, but account for nearly 25% of greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

California’s mandate will put an estimated 300,000 zero-emission trucks on the road by 2035. California’s planned rules will initially require 5%-9% ZEVs based on class, rising to 30%-50% by 2030 and nearly all by 2045.

The push comes as a rising number of companies – including Rivian, Tesla Inc., Nikola Corp., and General Motors work to introduce zero emission trucks.

Major businesses like Amazon.com, UPS and Walmart have also said they are ramping up purchases of electric delivery trucks.

California later plans to adopt new limits on nitrogen oxide emissions, one of the major precursors of smog, as well as require large fleet owners to buy some ZEVs.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Tom Hogue)

Climate change, COVID-19 stoke wildfire’s economic risk, Fed says

(Reuters) – Wildfires threaten the economy of the western United States to a greater extent than the rest of the country, and the coronavirus pandemic and climate change will only make that worse, according to research from the San Francisco Fed on Monday.

Some 52% of economic output in Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington originates in counties with elevated wildfire hazard, putting the economies of the region in jeopardy as wildfires become more frequent and more destructive, the researchers found. By 2040 that proportion will have risen to 56%, they estimate. By comparison, about 25% to 30% of the Southeast’s economy faces elevated wildfire risk.

The states together account for a bit more than one-fifth of U.S. economic output.

“The portion of real output produced in (the counties of these states) with elevated exposure increases from $2.1 trillion in 2018 to $4.0 trillion in 2040 in the baseline scenario,” the researchers wrote in the regional Fed’s latest Economic Letter. The economic output under particular wildfire threat rises to $4.4 trillion under a more severe climate change scenario, they said.

Wildfire risk is a combination of the likelihood of a big fire happening – which climate scientists have shown has been rising as the planet warms – and the economic destruction, in terms of lives and livelihoods destroyed that it could cause.

The coronavirus pandemic is increasing the latter risk because the fiscal pinch to states and local governments from the drop in sales tax and other revenue means cuts to wildfire suppression and prevention spending, the researchers said.

(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Tom Brown)

U.S. tops 3 million known infections as coronavirus surges

By Callaghan O’Hare and Lisa Shumaker

HOUSTON (Reuters) – The U.S. coronavirus outbreak crossed a grim milestone of over 3 million confirmed cases on Tuesday as more states reported record numbers of new infections, and Florida faced an impending shortage of intensive care unit hospital beds.

Authorities have reported alarming upswings of daily caseloads in roughly two dozen states over the past two weeks, a sign that efforts to control transmission of the novel coronavirus have failed in large swaths of the country.

California, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases. The biggest jumps occurred in Texas and California, the two largest U.S. states, with more than 10,000 each. About 24 states have reported disturbingly high infection rates as a percentage of diagnostic tests conducted over the past week.

In Texas alone, the number of hospitalized patients more than doubled in just two weeks.

The trend has driven many more Americans to seek out COVID-19 screenings. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday it was adding short-term “surge” testing sites in three metropolitan areas in Florida, Louisiana and Texas.

In Houston, a line of more than 200 cars snaked around the United Memorial Medical Center as people waited hours in sweltering heat to get tested. Some had arrived the night before to secure a place in line at the drive-through site.

“I got tested because my younger brother got positive,” said Fred Robles, 32, who spent the night in his car. “There’s so many people that need to get tested, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Dean Davis, 32, who lost his job due to the pandemic, said he arrived at the testing site at 3 a.m. Tuesday after he waited for hours on Monday but failed to make the cutoff.

“I was like, let me get here at 3, maybe nobody will be here,” Davis said. “I got here, there was a line already.”

In Florida, more than four dozen hospitals across 25 of 67 counties reported their intensive care units had reached full capacity, according to the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration. Only 17% of the total 6,010 adult ICU beds statewide were available on Tuesday, down from 20% three days earlier.

Additional hospitalizations could strain healthcare systems in many areas, leading to an uptick in lives lost from the respiratory illness that has killed more than 131,000 Americans to date. At least 923 of those deaths were reported Tuesday, the biggest single-day toll since June 10 but still far fewer than the record 2,806 tallied back in April.

A widely cited mortality model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) projected on Tuesday that U.S. deaths would reach 208,000 by Nov. 1, with the outbreak expected to gain new momentum heading into the fall.

A hoped-for summertime decline in transmission of the virus never materialized, the IHME said.

“The U.S. didn’t experience a true end of the first wave of the pandemic,” the IHME’s director, Dr. Christopher Murray, said in a statement. “This will not spare us from a second surge in the fall, which will hit particularly hard in states currently seeing high levels of infections.”

‘PRESSURE ON GOVERNORS’

President Donald Trump, who has pushed for restarting the U.S. economy and urged Americans to return to their normal routines, said on Tuesday he would lean on state governors to open schools in the fall.

Speaking at the White House, Trump said some people wanted to keep schools closed for political reasons. “No way, so we’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools.”

New COVID-19 infections are rising in 42 states, based on a Reuters analysis of the past two weeks. By Tuesday afternoon, the number of confirmed U.S. cases had surpassed 3 million, affecting nearly one of every 100 Americans and a population roughly equal to Nevada’s.

In Arizona, another hot spot, the rate of coronavirus tests coming back positive rose to 26% for the week ended July 5, leading two dozen states with positivity rates exceeding 5%. The World Heath Organization considers a rate over 5% to be troubling.

The surge has forced authorities to backpedal on moves to reopen businesses, such as restaurants and bars, after mandatory lockdowns in March and April reduced economic activity to a virtual standstill and put millions of Americans out of work.

The Texas state fair, which had been scheduled to open on Sept. 25, has been canceled for the first time since World War Two, organizers announced on Tuesday.

In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine said the state was ordering people in seven counties to wear face coverings in public starting Wednesday evening.

(Reporting by Callaghan O’Hare in Houston and Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Additional reporting by Maria Caspani, Gabriella Borter, Caroline Humer and Peter Szekely in New York and Susan Heavey and Jeff Mason in Washington Writing by Paul Simao and Steve Gorman; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Cynthia Osterman, Tom Brown and Leslie Adler)