COVID-19

MONTEREY COUNTY — Monterey County will lift its indoor mask requirement Monday for all county facilities except those that are covered by ongoing state mandates like jails and health care facilities. The county said in a statement that it will lift mask requirements and health...

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,...

SOLEDAD — A small group of about a dozen family members and activists protested Saturday outside the entrance of Salinas Valley State Prison and Correctional Training Facility in Soledad. Their goal was to raise awareness of the increasing Covid-19 infections and deaths inside the facilities,...

MONTEREY COUNTY — More than 10,742 Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in Monterey County, out of the total of 24,150 doses of both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines allocated and delivered to the county so far. Monterey County Health Officer Dr. Edward Moreno made the announcement...

CALIFORNIA — Before state officials announced that 40% of California's new vaccine doses would go to low-income communities, leaders were struggling to make good on promises to prioritize vulnerable Californians in the vaccine rollout. As my colleague Miriam Jordan recently wrote, farmworkers were among those...

SALINAS VALLEY — Nursing students from Hartnell Community College administered hundreds of Covid-19 vaccine doses to area firefighters last Saturday. The vaccinations took place at Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas locations in Salinas, Castroville, Greenfield and King City. Students involved were part of the...

CALIFORNIA — Dozens of times a day in COVID-19 wards across California, a scene like this plays out: A hospital chaplain watches as a death is announced by machine. Kristin Michealsen, a hospital chaplain in Los Angeles, stood at a man’s bedside, holding his hand....

SALINAS — Northwest Laboratory will open and operate a new drive-thru Covid-19 testing site in Salinas starting March 3. “Our organization has worked closely with the communities across the U.S. since this pandemic began, providing laboratory analysis for multiple community testing programs,” said Jennifer Bull,...

KING CITY — Salinas Valley Fairgrounds remains in a modified state of operation as Covid-19 pandemic health guidelines continue to restrict the types of activities that can be carried out in public settings.  The upcoming in-person Livestock Grading Show and Online Auction are being planned...

MONTEREY COUNTY — On Sept. 4, the federal unemployment insurance program, known as the Pandemic Unemployment Insurance benefit, created under the CARES Act, will expire in California and across the states. “Starting today, over 3 million California workers impacted by the expiration of these critical...