By Aldon Thomas Stiles California Black Media The Monday after Christmas, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shortened its COVID-19 quarantine recommendation by half. That same day, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Twitter that California will follow suit, recommending a five-day isolation period instead of the state’s former guidance of 10 days. “California ...

by Gov. Gavin Newsom Special to California Black Media Partners Since the early days of the pandemic, California has led the nation’s fight against COVID-19 through robust vaccination efforts rooted in science and data. This has helped slow the spread of the virus and save countless lives, especially in our most vulnerable communities – someone’s ...

By Dianne Anderson No one really understood HIV in the early days of the virus, how it acted. Medical professionals couldn’t even predict how the bodies were going to be after death. As a mortician, Margo Malone recalls how they treated HIV much the same way as with the start of COVID-19 pandemic. Back then, ...

COMMENTARY By Nadine Burke Harris, MD, MPH Special to California Black Media Partners Our state experienced the most devastating point of the pandemic last winter. More than 21,000 Californians were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the last week of December, and we lost 18,518 mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers to this deadly virus in January. The ...

On Oct. 27, Gov. Gavin Newsom held a press conference after receiving a Moderna booster shot to augment the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine he took in April. The governor said he deliberately opted for a different vaccine as a booster to emphasize the Centers of Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance that ...

By Aldon Thomas Stiles California Black Media Black Californians have joined Black Americans around the country in closing the COVID-19 vaccine equity gap. As of Oct. 11, Black Californians were 4.2% of Californians that have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, up from 2.7% in February, according to the California Department of ...

By Dianne Anderson Some things seem to be getting back to semi-normal for the kids at NorthPointe Apartments where they are all masked up, and happy to be in the same room seeing eye to eye. At the Success in Challenges Homework Assistance Center, students from 6-16 years old and their tutors are making up ...

By Aldon Thomas Stiles California Black Media Gov. Gavin Newsom took to Twitter earlier this month to praise Californians for getting vaccinated when the state’s COVID rate dropped to 57.3 cases per 100,000 people, the lowest in the U.S. “85% of eligible Californians have received at least one COVID vaccine shot. The result? California continues ...

By Charlene Crowell Closing gaps would create 1.7M jobs, add $300-450B to the economy As the global pandemic continues to take lives and infect multiple generations, virtually every dimension of life is challenged. And people with the fewest financial resources before COVID-19 are being challenged more than ever before. It is both a challenge and ...

by Dianne Anderson Flu season isn’t technically here yet, but already COVID-19 Delta cases top the charts at nearly three times as bad as this time last year. Facts are facts, and data from the latest surge of the highly contagious variant is hard to ignore, even as die-hard anti-vaxxers are filling up hospitals nationwide. ...