California’s coronavirus emergency declaration expires today, Feb. 28, almost three years after it began. It allowed Gov. Gavin Newsom to enact almost 600 pandemic-related state executive orders suspending or changing laws to fight the virus.
The emergency declaration helped California hospitals get through huge numbers of patients by permitting facilities to temporarily expand treatment spaces (including in hospital gift shops) and allowed hospital administrators to hire workers from out of state to cope with staffing shortages. The remaining 27 orders still in place expire today.
The sunsetting of the emergency declaration reflects a shift in how officials are approaching the pandemic. We haven’t seen the winter spike this season as in years past. Also, cases and hospitalizations are stable.
Still, about 1,000 cases were reported each day in L.A. County last week, though with at-home testing that number is certainly an undercount. About 109 people are hospitalized each day with COVID-19 in the county. The coronavirus is still killing about 22 people per day in California, with 15 of them in L.A. County per day.
What will change in LA?
Los Angeles County sites will continue to provide vaccines, therapeutics and test kits for free to those who are uninsured and underinsured “as long as our supplies last,” according to County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.
“We anticipate no changes to the distribution of vaccines and therapeutics through the next few months,” she said in an email, adding that the county is “hoping that this will be true as well for COVID tests, although our supply is more limited.”
The majority of funding for…
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