Staffing hospitals + COVID-19 and farm workers + Advocating relief for prisoners
Top of the Tuesday morning to you, California. Thanks for starting your morning with the Capitol Alert team!
WHERE WE’RE AT
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pen must be running out of ink at this point.
The governor signed another executive order to help get “thousands and thousands” additional health care workers into facilities treating coronavirus patients. The executive order gives state officials power to let medical professionals do a wider range of work and allows nurses to oversee more patients at a time, The Bee’s Sophia Bollag reports. He says the executive order will be in place through June 30, although the order itself does not mention that date.
The California Department of Public Health announced yesterday the state has confirmed 5,763 positive COVID-19 cases and 135 deaths.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s health and human services secretary, said the state is currently able to take care of anyone who needs a hospital bed and a ventilator.
There are many issues with the state’s testing capacity right now, Ghaly and Newsom said. Not just with the materials but the time it takes to get back the results.
“The number of pending tests out there is extraordinarily frustrating because of the delay in getting that information back into the system, in the patient’s inboxes,” Newsom said.
The Navy hospital ship Mercy started taking its first patients on Sunday, Newsom said. The federal government is working with California on more emergency facilities. Two hospitals acquired by the state, Seton Medical Center in Daly City and St. Vincent in Los Angeles, are getting up and running. A third is taking shape in Long Beach. Other hospital resources are being identified, Newsom said.
Newsom said education leaders throughout the state were scheduled to have a “sober” conversation yesterday on what the rest of the school year will look like. He said they’d focus on remote learning, special education and food distribution.
In that arena, a bipartisan group of state lawmakers sent a letter to Newsom asking him to hold charter schools and local educational agencies accountable to providing meals and quality instruction to their students.
“I am concerned that some kids are not receiving meals and instruction during the current closures,” said Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach.
State Sen. Ling Ling Chang, R-Diamond Bar, also announced legislation that would expand Paid Family Leave to those caring for children now that COVID-19 has shuttered most schools.
“While federal representatives have stepped up,” Chang said, “I’m worried some families will be left behind. We need to ensure everyone is protected from the economic damage imposed by COVID19.”
WHEN YOU HOARD FOOD...
Know you’re affecting the grocery supply chain in a very, very bad way.
“The disruptions of food supply we’re seeing in stores right now is caused by changes in buying habits and difficulty keeping shelves stocked,” said Cannon Michael, president and CEO of Bowles Farming Company, in a recent interview with the Public Policy Institute of California.
What would be even worse, Michael said, is if the virus spreads to farm workers, who often live in close proximity to one another and whose work demands their daily attendance.
“If there’s disruption on farms—if crops don’t get harvested in time or the logistics for getting food to market go down, that would be much scarier,” Michael said.
So what could help?
Michael told PPIC that President Donald Trump’s immigration policies have hurt workers’ ability to come from Mexico and Central America to seasonally work on farms.
“Fixing federal immigration policy is critical. The key point is we need to get food off the farms, and to do that we have to have enough laborers,” Michael said. “One hopeful sign is that the federal government recently announced it will relax the new restrictions on the H-2A program. That should help people get here to work.”
‘ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK’ AUTHOR SPEAKS OUT
Attorneys and advocates, including “Orange is the New Black” author Piper Kerman are set to hold a digital press conference Tuesday to call on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to release California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation inmates at risk for COVID-19, including the elderly and medically vulnerable.
The press conference is being held by attorneys Michael Bien and Alison Hardy, who represent California inmates, in the long-running Coleman/Plata v. Newsom lawsuit over prison conditions.
The motion seeks “emergency relief to prevent unnecessary irreparable injuries and death that are certain to occur if the COVID-19 virus is allowed to take its natural course in the still-overcrowded California prisons,” according to court documents, as previously reported by The Bee’s Sam Stanton.
Bien and Hardy will present on the litigation, which will be heard by the three-judge panel this Thursday, while Kerman and other prisoner advocates “will present the stories from inside prison,” according to a statement about the event.
The group argues that there is strong bipartisan support for reducing prison populations as a way of dealing with the coronavirus; 66 percent of likely voters, including 59 percent of those who identify as “very conservative,” said elected officials should consider measures to reduce prison and jail overcrowding, according to the group Data For Progress.
The press conference will take place over Zoom at 11 a.m. Pacific Time.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“To every doctor and healthcare worker out there on the front lines of this pandemic -- THANK YOU.Thank you for your tireless work to keep our communities safe and your willingness to risk your own health to help save others.You are true heroes. #NationalDoctorsDay”
- Gov. Gavin Newsom, via Twitter.
Best of the Bee:
California companies can get $10 million loans from new coronavirus law. Here’s how, by David Lightman
An employee in Sacramento County’s Department of Child, Family and Adult Services has tested positive for the coronavirus, by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks.
The number of Californians dying from COVID-19 is growing at a much slower pace than in some other states. At the moment, California COVID-19 deaths are doubling every three to four days. In New York, New Jersey and Michigan, the number of deaths doubles about every one to two days, by Phillip Reese