In California: Counties beg for more vaccine; security at Capitol beefed up
Robert HopwoodGreetings 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.
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Counties beg for more vaccine
California counties begged for more coronavirus vaccine as the state added a potential 4 to 6 million people to those eligible for the sought-after doses.
State public health officials followed federal guidance Wednesday by announcing that people 65 and older could get the two-dose vaccine.
But Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous with 10 million residents and an epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, said it couldn’t immediately provide them because it hasn’t yet inoculated health care workers, who have first crack at the vaccine.
Only about a quarter of some 800,000 had been inoculated, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.
California had received more than 2.4 million vaccine doses as of Monday, but only a third of them have been used. The state aims to administer nearly 1.5 million vaccine doses by Friday.
Nearly 50 state lawmakers signed a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday noting that incoming President Joe Biden’s administration has announced its intent to release “nearly all available” vaccine to the states and asking for counties to receive supply updates and a “reliable” four-week forecast on expected vaccine quantities.
They also asked the governor to expand authorization for who can administer doses to include nursing students, retired medical workers, firefighters and National Guard members with medical training.
Local governments, meanwhile, are moving quickly to set up massive vaccine distribution sites in the hopes they can convince state and federal officials to send them more doses.
Santa Clara County public health officials say the county of 2 million people only has enough vaccine to serve people age 75 or older. Officials said they asked the state for 100,000 doses but had received 6,000.
In Orange County, a vaccination site opened Wednesday at a Disneyland parking lot that officials boasted could eventually vaccinate up to 7,000 people daily.
San Diego County, home to 3.3 million people, has received more than 241,000 doses. Officials said adding 65-year-olds would make about 500,000 more people eligible but it’s an open question as to when doses will arrive.
Heat, poor planning led to power outages
Energy regulators on Wednesday blamed blackouts last summer that affected hundreds of thousands of Californians on poor planning, electrical market problems and an extreme heatwave that blanketed the West, Associated Press reported.
The 131-page report covered events of Aug. 14 and Aug. 15 when the state’s power grid ordered utilities to cut electricity to customers on a rotating basis for around an hour at a time. More than 800,000 homes and businesses were affected over the two days.
Gov. Gavin Newsom demanded an investigation. An analysis was prepared by the California Public Utilities Commission, the state Energy Commission and the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s power grid.
The report said the outages didn’t have a single root cause but there were a series of contributing factors.
California was sweltering under a “historic” heat wave, with temperatures 10 to 20 degrees above normal affecting 32 million residents and the temperature didn’t cool off much overnight, meaning air conditioners continued to run, the report said.
The heat wave also blanketed other Western states and made it harder to import extra electricity to deal with the demand, the report said.
California, which has increased its reliance on solar power as it moves toward total reliance on renewable energy, also didn’t properly plan for more supplies to cover evening hours when solar power production begins to fall, according to the study.
Also, availability of hydroelectric power that summer was below normal, the report said.
Some issues in the energy market also contributed to supply challenges, such as failing to schedule enough energy ahead of time, the report said.
The report said energy agencies are already taking actions to avoid similar outages during expected heat waves next summer.
Extra security at state Capitol
Gov. Gavin Newsom has called in the California National Guard to help secure the state Capitol in Sacramento in the days before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration Wednesday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The added security follows last week’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the FBI’s warnings of plans for armed protests in Washington and at all 50 state capitals in the days leading up to Biden’s inauguration.
Newsom said up to 1,000 members of the Guard will be deployed to help protect the Capitol and other state infrastructure.
The governor said the 1,000 Guard troops were an “initial deployment” to help the California Highway Patrol secure the complex. In addition, the state has activated its 24-hour emergency operations center to oversee the response to any protest.
California professor who spoke at Trump rally retires
A law professor who spoke during President Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., rally last week before the attack on the U.S. Capitol has retired from a California university where there were demands for his ouster, AP reports.
The retirement of John Eastman from Chapman University, a 9,600-student university in the city of Orange, resulted from an agreement reached during discussions and was effective immediately, university President Daniele Struppa said in a statement to the school community Wednesday.
Eastman stood next to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani during the Jan. 6 rally and made false claims about voter fraud, The Orange County Register reported.
More than 160 members of the Chapman faculty signed a letter calling for the university to take action against Eastman.
9 inmates charged in unemployment fraud
Nine state prison inmates have been charged in San Diego County with scamming California’s unemployment benefits system.
The inmates received more than $160,000 between June and September 2020, District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a statement Thursday.
The nine allegedly lied about their eligibility and addresses on state Employment Development Department applications while assigned to a program in San Diego that allows some inmates to finish their sentences in halfway house settings.
Stephan said fraud committed by inmates in San Diego County is believed to total as much as $5 million.
Stars not allowed at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am
The spike in COVID-19 cases in California led organizers to cancel the pro-am portion of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am tournament, which has a long history of entertainers, celebrities and CEOs mixing with the pros on one of the most famous and picturesque landscapes in America.
The tournament also is losing one of its golf courses. The 156-man field on Feb. 11-14 will be held only at Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill. It typically includes the Shore course at Monterey Peninsula Country Club.
Salton Sea habitat project gets started
Construction began this week on a 4,110-acre wetlands project on the Salton Sea's playa near the mouth of the highly polluted New River, the California Department of Natural Resources announced Wednesday.
Called the Species Conservation Habitat Project, the $206.5 million plan will build ponds and wetlands along the small delta to provide wildlife habitat and suppress dust. The final design includes 340 additional acres of coverage as compared to older projections, and work led by Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. is expected to be finished by 2024.
Disneyland ends annual pass program
Disneyland is ending its annual pass program 10 months after the theme park in Anaheim shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The park said Thursday it will begin issuing “appropriate” refunds to eligible passholders. It was not immediately clear how many people hold these passes.
The announcement comes the same week that Disneyland allowed county health officials to use its parking lot as a large-scale coronavirus vaccination site.
Disneyland closed in March and has not reopened because virus transmission in the area where the park sits has not declined to the levels required by the state.
That's all for this Thursday. 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 the Associated Press.