The more things change, the more things stay the same.
A little more than a year after the first COVID-19 vaccines arrived in California, the state is bracing for yet another surge — and piling back on protections.
On Wednesday, the day California’s new indoor mask mandate went into effect, the state Department of Public Health quietly updated its online guidance to emphasize that the rules — which are set to last through Jan. 15 — apply to both public and private workplaces. Previously, the state had allowed most fully vaccinated workers to forgo masks.
Then the standards board of Cal/OSHA, the state’s workplace safety agency, voted Thursday to, among other things, eliminate some distinctions between vaccinated and unvaccinated workers. Under the new temporary COVID workplace rules — which are slated to last from Jan. 14 to April 14 — workers exposed to someone who’s tested positive for the virus must quarantine for two weeks (though asymptomatic vaccinated employees will have the option to wear masks and social distance), and companies must make free COVID tests available to them at work.
- Robert Moutrie, a California Chamber of Commerce policy advocate, told my colleague Grace Gedye: “We have serious concerns about the implications of those changes, both in a world where rapid COVID-19 tests are becoming less available and where excluding more workers from the workplace — who are showing no symptoms and have been vaccinated — is going to make operational difficulties for many employers in California who are already short-staffed and struggling with a labor shortage.”
But labor advocates say the changes will help protect workers: “Unfortunately, vaccination is not immunity, and vaccination doesn’t mean you can’t spread the disease,” Stephen Knight, executive director of Worksafe, told Grace.
Indeed, California health officials are bracing for what Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County’s public health officer, called a “deluge of omicron.” COVID hospitalizations have spiked 15% statewide in the last three weeks, from 3,439 patients on Nov. 23 to 3,971 on Wednesday, according to state data. And, as more COVID cases are confirmed across the state and uncertainty continues to swirl around the omicron variant, cancellations are pouring in.
Moved online: A massive January JPMorgan Chase health conference in San Francisco, which would have injected much-needed dollars into the city’s hard-hit hospitality sector.
Delayed indefinitely: Apple’s return to in-person work.
Pushed to Zoom: Stanford’s first two weeks of January classes — and instruction for the entire sixth-grade class at Travis Ranch School in Yorba Linda, which was recently hit with a COVID outbreak.
Cancelled: Thursday practice for the Sacramento Kings basketball team, which also shut down its facility amid reports that multiple players had tested positive.
- David Thomas, chair of Cal/OSHA’s standards board: “Every time we’ve gotten more flexible, we’ve gone in the wrong direction. When we try to be too flexible, people die.”
—Emily Hoeven, CALMatters
Jobless claims jump — again
If COVID isn’t going away in California, neither are its economic effects. Despite ongoing efforts to unsnarl supply chain bottlenecks, a record 101 container ships were waiting Monday to unload cargo at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports — which nevertheless handled in November the lowest number of loaded inbound containers since June 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal. One reason for the slowdown: persistent worker shortages, a challenge that doesn’t seem likely to go away anytime soon. More than 57,000 Californians filed new jobless claims for the week ending Dec. 11, according to federal data released Thursday — an increase of nearly 2,000 from the week before.
Michael Bernick, an attorney at Duane Morris and a former director of the state Employment Development Department: “Heading into 2022, the main employment narratives in California are the slow return to work and low labor force participation rate (61.8% as of October) … and how the economy continues to be awash in federal and state government spending. … This inflation rate has undermined the wage gains for workers in California, particularly lower-wage workers, which was one of the positive results of the tight labor market of the past year.”
However, it appears that some federal spending might be curtailed, at least temporarily. With President Joe Biden’s massive Build Back Better spending package stalled in Congress, California families on Wednesday began receiving the final installment of the expanded child tax credit. Advocates warn that if the benefit isn’t resuscitated, nearly 2 million California children could fall back under the poverty line or even deeper into poverty.
—Hoeven, CALMatters
WILLOWS
Forest offices closed for Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays
Mendocino National Forest offices in Willows and Upper Lake will close early at 12 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 23 and will be closed on Friday, Dec. 24 in observance of the Christmas Day holiday. Regular office hours will resume on Monday, Dec. 27.
Forest offices will also close early at 12 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 30 and will be closed on Friday, Dec. 31 in observance of the New Year’s Day holiday. Regular office hours will resume on Monday, Jan. 3.
—Submitted
