In California: Mass vaccination sites open across the state

Plus: Stay-at-home order lifted in Sacramento; Covered California nears 1.6 million enrollees; and Uber, Lyft drivers sue the state.

Greetings from Palm Springs. I’m Robert Hopwood, online producer for The Desert Sun, bringing you a daily roundup of the top news from across California.

In California brings you top Golden State stories and commentary from across the USA TODAY Network and beyond. Get it free, straight to your inbox.

Get your vaccine at Disneyland, or the stadium

California is transforming baseball stadiums, fairgrounds and even a Disneyland Resort parking lot into mass vaccination sites.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and public health officials are counting on widespread vaccinations to help stem the tide of new infections, starting with medical workers and the most vulnerable elderly, such as those in care homes. Newsom acknowledged the rollout of vaccines has been too slow.

About a month into the rollout, roughly 2% of 40 million Californians have been inoculated. In total, California has received 2,466,125 doses; it's administered about 32% of those, or 783,476 doses, Newsom said.  

Newsom pledged 1 million shots will be administered this week, more than twice what's been done so far. 

That effort will require what Newsom called an “all-hands-on-deck approach,” including having vaccinations dispensed by pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, dentists, paramedics and emergency medical technicians, and members of the California National Guard.

Orange County, south of Los Angeles County, announced Monday that its first mass vaccination site will be at a Disneyland Resort parking lot in Anaheim. It’s one of the sites to be set up to vaccinate thousands of people daily.

The state will vastly expand its effort with new mass vaccination sites at parking lots for Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Petco Park in San Diego and the CalExpo fairgrounds in Sacramento.

Stay-at-home order lifted for Sacramento region

California is lifting its stay-at-home order for the 13-county Sacramento region. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday the region’s coronavirus hospitalizations have stabilized sufficiently to allow the region to be the first in the state to exit the order imposed last month as virus cases exploded. 

The move means restaurants may again serve diners outdoors, hair salons and other businesses can reopen, and retail stores can serve more customers. 

The San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley and Southern California all continue to have more pronounced shortages of ICU space in hospitals and remain under the order. 

Wildfires produce up to half of the West’s air pollution

Wildfire smoke accounted for up to half of all health-damaging small particle air pollution in the western U.S. in recent years as warming temperatures fueled more destructive blazes, according to a study released Monday.

Even as pollution emissions declined from other sources including vehicle exhaust and power plants, the amount from fires increased sharply, said researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, San Diego.

Nationwide, wildfires were the source of up to 25% of small particle pollution in some years, the researchers said. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers used satellite images of smoke plumes and government air quality data to model how much pollution was generated nationwide by fires from 2016 to 2018 compared to a decade earlier. Their results were in line with previous studies of smoke emissions across earlier time periods and more limited geographic areas.

Large wildfires churn out plumes of smoke thick with microscopic pollution particles that can drift hundreds or even thousands of miles. Driving the explosion in fires in recent years were warmer temperatures, drought and decades of aggressive firefighting tactics that allowed forest fuels to accumulate.

Covered California nears 1.6 million enrollees

Nearly 1.6 million people have purchased health insurance through Covered California, state officials said Tuesday.

Altogether, nearly 200,000 more people have purchased health insurance this year compared with the same time period last year, a 14% increase. The deadline to purchase coverage is Jan. 31.

Covered California’s enrollment declined three years in a row until 2020, when a new state law took effect that imposed a tax on people who don’t have health insurance. That same year, California spent millions of dollars on subsidies to help middle-income earners pay their monthly health insurance premiums.

Enrollment surged again last summer, peaking at 1.53 million people after an additional 289,000 people purchased coverage during a special enrollment period because of the coronavirus.

The new number announced Tuesday — 1.57 million — comes after the state again imposed a stay-at-home order on most of the state following a surge of new cases. 

Uber, Lyft drivers sue state

Drivers for app-based ride-hailing and delivery services filed a lawsuit Tuesday to overturn a California ballot initiative that makes them independent contractors instead of employees eligible for benefits and job protections.

The lawsuit filed with the California Supreme Court said Proposition 22 is unconstitutional because it limits the power of the Legislature to grant workers the right to organize and excludes drivers from being eligible for workers’ compensation.

The measure, which was passed in November with 58% support, was the most expensive in state history with Uber, Lyft and other services pouring $200 million in support of it. Labor unions, who joined drivers in the lawsuit, spent about $20 million to challenge it.

Biden returns donation from Barbara Boxer

President-elect Joe Biden’s inaugural committee said it would refund a $500 donation from former California Sen. Barbara Boxer because she was working as a lobbyist for the Chinese firm Hikvision, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Initially, Boxer said in federal documents she signed last week that she would be “providing strategic consulting services” to the U.S. subsidiary of Hikvision, a Chinese firm that the Trump administration placed on a trade blacklist last year after the Defense Department said the company was controlled by the Chinese military.

Hikvision is a large manufacturer of video surveillance equipment that human rights advocates say is being used to subjugate Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic groups at forced labor camps in China.

Biden’s inaugural committee said it would return Boxer’s donation because it does not accept contributions from registered foreign agents. The controversy has led Boxer to de-register as foreign agent.

That's all for this Tuesday. We'll be back in your inbox tomorrow with more headlines from the Golden State.

In California is a roundup of news from across USA Today network newsrooms. Also contributing: the San Francisco Chronicle and Associated Press.