COVID-19

MONTEREY COUNTY — California residents have been advised to stay indoors, and only leave their home for essential items or services, since the statewide stay-at-home order went into effect March 19 to help combat the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Essential businesses, however, can stay open...

MONTEREY COUNTY — Reopening blueprint metrics have Monterey County in the Orange Tier, but the vaccination rates continue to climb. County Health Officer Dr. Edward Moreno said on April 14 that 48% of the county’s populace age 16 and older have received at least one...

MONTEREY COUNTY — Monterey County’s Environmental Health Bureau has conducted 1,971 visits to area businesses since September, which resulted in 12 citations for violations of Covid-related health orders and one permit revocation. Ricardo Encarnacion, assistant bureau chief for the Environmental Health Bureau, made the announcement...

SALINAS VALLEY — Monterey County health officials have been working with agricultural companies and have reiterated safety plans with the onset of the new growing season, with the goal of keeping ag workers safe and the food supply network stable. “With the start of the...

MONTEREY COUNTY — In alignment with the state of California, Monterey County and nearly a dozen other Bay Area jurisdictions have lifted universal mask requirements for most indoor public settings beginning Wednesday. Last week Monterey County announced that it would join the counties of Alameda,...

CALIFORNIA — California surpassed 50,000 known coronavirus deaths Wednesday, the first state to reach that chilling milestone. The news comes as a bleak reminder that the recent progress the state has made against the pandemic may be fragile. Most of those deaths were recorded recently,...

MONTEREY COUNTY — Monterey County is making good on its commitment to invest up to $1 million to secure more Covid-19 rapid tests for the community, with the first direct purchases from this effort arriving last week. About 750 test kits were delivered last Wednesday,...

The push to mandate coronavirus vaccinations amid sharply rising caseloads nationwide accelerated Monday, as the country’s most populous state and its largest city both announced that they would require hundreds of thousands of government workers to get inoculations or face weekly testing. At the same...

The surge in unemployment filings in March 2020 provided one of the first clear warnings of the havoc the pandemic was wreaking on the U.S. economy. One year later, that klaxon is still blaring. More than 746,000 people filed first-time applications for state unemployment benefits last...

MONTEREY COUNTY — Three residents have been infected with Covid-19 that was caused by the Delta variant, confirmed Monterey County Health Department on Thursday. According to Public Information Officer Karen Smith, the Health Department has been monitoring the emergence of variants of the virus that...