California would spend $2.7 billion on new efforts to reply to the surge in COVID-19 instances, together with extra testing capability and help to hospitals, beneath a price range proposal Gov. Gavin Newsom will ship to state lawmakers subsequent week.
Newsom will even ask legislators to assist craft new COVID sick pay guidelines for Californians, modeled after the coverage that expired final fall, requiring companies with 26 or extra staff to supply as much as two weeks of supplemental paid sick go away for workers to take care of themselves or a member of the family.
“Our proposed COVID-19 Emergency Response Package deal will help our testing capability, speed up vaccination and booster efforts, help frontline staff and well being care techniques and battle misinformation,” Newsom stated in a written assertion Saturday.
Advisors to Newsom stated Saturday the governor will ask the Legislature to take fast motion on authorizing the primary $1.4 billion of the brand new pandemic response package deal when he sends his annual state spending plan to the Legislature on Monday. Many of the early funding would go to increase testing packages, with the remaining portion spent on virus response efforts inside California prisons.
State officers hope that fast motion on the funding for brand new testing — $418 million now out of an effort that can whole $1.2 billion — will assist increase hours of operation and capability at current testing places, in addition to velocity up the distribution of speedy check kits to native well being departments and faculties. The Newsom administration has struggled in current days to make good on the governor’s promise to make sure check kits can be within the arms of California households earlier than their kids returned to colleges from winter break, an effort funded out of cash appropriated final yr by lawmakers.
On Friday, Newsom deployed members of the California Nationwide Guard to testing websites throughout the state, with an extra deployment scheduled subsequent week. Guard members will help with affected person check-in and crowd management duties, in addition to serving as scientific workers till everlasting hires are made.
State public well being officers stated greater than 2,700 individuals have been admitted to California hospitals Friday for COVID, bringing the whole to greater than 10,000. The pressure on the state’s hospitals from COVID sufferers, officers stated, is nearing the challenges skilled final winter, earlier than vaccines have been extensively obtainable.
California has averaged greater than 65,000 new instances a day over the previous week, based on knowledge compiled by The Occasions.
The brand new state price range plan proposes $583 million to extend vaccination charges and, based on a abstract offered by the Newsom administration, “fight misinformation” by partnerships with media shops centered on the state’s communities of colour. An extra $110 million can be spent on testing and vaccination of migrants who cross the Mexico border into California, in addition to funds to increase contact tracing packages throughout the state.
Thus far, most of the price of California’s pandemic response efforts has been coated by the federal authorities. A November report from the state Division of Finance put the tally at greater than $9.4 billion in federal {dollars} spent. An extra $2.3 billion in state prices by the top of September have been reimbursed by the federal authorities. State officers consider lots of the bills within the $2.7-billion proposal will even be reimbursed by the federal authorities.
Newsom’s price range will earmark a large portion of the brand new coronavirus funds to spice up efforts at California’s prisons, the place an extra 1,275 instances have been reported within the final 14 days. The state’s mandate that jail workers get vaccinated was blocked by a federal appeals court docket in November.
California’s funds are well-positioned to cowl COVID-19 response prices. Final fall, impartial analysts projected a $31-billion state price range surplus, an estimate that shall be up to date in Newsom’s spending plan subsequent week.
