California
As COVID wave wallops California, new vaccines arrive this week. Will it be turning point?
New COVID-19 vaccines are expected to be available as soon as this week, a promising development amid California’s potent and enduring summer wave of the disease.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the distribution of the updated Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines for the 2024-25 season on Thursday. And in preparation for winter, when COVID typically surges again, federal officials said Americans will soon be able to register to receive four free tests in the mail.
Major retailers — including CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Ralphs, Vons, Pavilions, Albertsons and Safeway — are already accepting appointments for the new COVID-19 vaccines, or soon will. Kaiser Permanente expects to begin administering the shots by mid-September, and possibly earlier in some locations.
The new vaccines have been reformulated in hopes of providing optimal protection against the most commonly circulating coronavirus strains, a process that can be comparable to development of the annual flu shot.
The arrival of the latest vaccines comes amid a surprisingly powerful summer COVID wave — the strongest in terms of infections since 2022. Increased circulation of new hyperinfectious subvariants has sickened many Americans, ruined vacations and weddings and forced people to miss work.
Coronavirus levels in wastewater are considered “high” or “very high” in 45 states, including California, as well as in the District of Columbia. Coronavirus sewage levels were considered “moderate” in Michigan, New Jersey, Vermont and West Virginia; no data was available for North Dakota.
Earlier this year, some of the coronavirus subvariants that succeeded last winter’s dominant strain were collectively nicknamed FLiRT — a play on some of the technical terms for their mutations. That group included a strain officially known as KP.2.
A successor subvariant, KP.3, had a different mutation and so was nicknamed FLuQE — pronounced “fluke.” An even more contagious subvariant, KP.3.1.1, had a mutation that was deleted, giving it the unofficial moniker deFLuQE, or “de-fluke.”
For most people, September and October are the best months to get vaccinated against both COVID-19 and flu, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Everyone age 6 months and older should receive updated COVID-19 and flu vaccines, and can get both during the same visit, the CDC said.
“The important part is getting it done,” CDC Director Mandy Cohen said at a briefing. “If September, from a calendar perspective, works better for folks, great. October gets you closer to the to the winter season. But the important part is getting it done.”
Dr. Cohen said Friday that peak winter hospitalizations for COVID-19, flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV — a triple-header that has strained hospitals in the past — are expected to be similar to last year’s, or even slightly improved. But that forecast could prove overly optimistic, she said, if some assumptions end up being wrong — for example, if fewer people get vaccinated than expected.
COVID-19 continues to circulate at a very high level nationally and in California.
The rate at which coronavirus tests are coming back positive continues to rise. For the week that ended Aug. 14, 14.4% of reported coronavirus tests were positive in California. That’s higher than the peaks seen last summer and winter, and up from about 11% a month ago.
But depending on the region, “I think we are potentially seeing some indication of a plateauing of the summer increase in COVID-19,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who heads the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Still, “we’re not out of the woods yet,” he added.
There are now 26 states, including California, where COVID-19 is projected to be “growing” or “likely growing.” That’s down from 44 states in those categories about six weeks ago, according to the CDC.
There are initial signs that the summer surge may be starting to peak in some areas, including Los Angeles County, although trends won’t be clear until there are a few weeks of sustained declines.
For the week that ended Aug. 18, there were an average of 421 coronavirus cases a day in L.A. County. The week prior, there were 484.
Out of all emergency department encounters countywide for the week that ended Aug. 18, 3.9% were related to the coronavirus, down from the previous week’s 4.3%. Last summer’s peak was 5.1%.
COVID hospitalizations are essentially flat. For the week that ended Aug. 17, a daily average of 478 coronavirus-infected people were in hospitals in L.A. County. The week before, there were 481. Last summer’s peak was 620.
“Given that this is just one week’s data, it’s too soon to know if these declines will continue or indicate if transmission has plateaued or peaked,” the L.A. County Department of Public Health said in a statement to The Times.
Coronavirus levels in the county’s wastewater are up, but that metric has a longer lag time than other indicators. For the 10-day period that ended Aug. 10, coronavirus levels in L.A. County sewage were measured at 87% of last winter’s peak. That’s up from the 10-day period that ended Aug. 3, when coronavirus levels were at 76% of the winter peak.
Overall, coronavirus levels in California’s wastewater have been largely flat in recent weeks.
In general this summer, emergency room visits, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID have been rising, but, fortunately not as sharply as during earlier waves of the pandemic.
“While the COVID virus continues to mutate and change faster than the flu virus, our underlying immunity from prior vaccines and prior infections provides some protection,” Cohen said. “But we know that protection decreases over time, and certain groups continue to be at higher risk from COVID and other viruses, and we need to continue to protect ourselves and our loved ones.”
COVID remains more of a threat than the flu.
“In terms of what is hospitalizing more folks and what is killing more folks, COVID continues to be a more dangerous virus than flu,” Cohen said.
Nationally, at least 50,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported since October, compared with at least 25,000 flu deaths. CDC estimates on flu deaths will be updated later this year.
That’s why it’s so important that people get freshly vaccinated heading into fall, doctors say. Those at highest risk include seniors and immunocompromised people who haven’t been vaccinated against COVID-19 in more than a year.
As of the end of last winter, just 29% of seniors nationally had received the previous COVID-19 vaccination, according to data on a subset of Medicare beneficiaries. As of July 31, 37% of California seniors had received at least one dose of that vaccine, which first became available last September.
It’s not just seniors who can be at risk. “Remember … 80% of the adults in the country have some sort of underlying condition that could put them at some sort of increased risk,” Cohen said.
And the very young can be vulnerable, too.
“When we look at who went to the emergency room for COVID, we actually saw that it was highest for those under the age of 5,” Cohen said of this summer’s wave. “We can’t forget that at every age group, there are risks, including our young children.”
Each new infection also carries the risk of long COVID — in which symptoms, sometimes severe enough to be debilitating, can emerge, persist, resolve and reemerge over a period of weeks, months or years.
“I have a tremendous empathy, having seen people struggle with long COVID in their 30s and 40s, people who you might think were otherwise low-risk,” Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s vaccine chief, said Friday. There are estimates that getting vaccinated can reduce the risk of developing long COVID by 50%, Marks said.
People who might want to consider getting the updated COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible include those who are older or immunocompromised and haven’t been vaccinated in more than a year. Those groups are at highest risk for being hospitalized with COVID-19 now, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert.
“I would love them to get protected, if they would want to go and get the vaccine now,” Chin-Hong said.
Another consideration is whether you are about to go on a trip, or planning an unmissable event or experience.
“Right now, if they want to prevent infection, it’s a good time to get something, because it’s so closely matched to what’s going around,” Chin-Hong said of the new vaccine.
Getting the COVID-19 vaccine now will offer good protection against severe disease through the winter, he said.
Chin-Hong said the best protection against infection is within roughly six to eight weeks after getting vaccinated — though that window can be wider if the vaccine is a close match to circulating subvariants.
Marks said timing is a matter of personal choice, but he already has his own vaccine appointment scheduled.
“Getting vaccinated now probably gives you the maximum amount of protection that you can get against what’s currently circulating, and that will last for several months at least,” he said.
The many people who have recently had COVID-19 may wait for as long as three months to get vaccinated, according to the CDC, as an infection in many cases imparts strong, if fleeting, protection against the virus — at least for a few weeks or months. But there are some reasons to get the vaccine soon after an illness, such as if you, a family member or household member are at high risk of severe COVID illness, or if transmission is elevated where you live.
And for people who just got vaccinated against COVID over the summer with the older formula, they can wait two months before getting the updated one, Chin-Hong said, “so October would be fine for them.”
“To me, the sweet spot is always October,” he said, as it’s closer to the peak of the late fall and winter respiratory virus season, as well as major holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year.
Another measure health officials recommend, particularly when transmission is elevated, is testing when you feel sick, or before events — especially if medically vulnerable people are going to attend.
Starting in late September, free COVID tests from the federal government will be available for order at covidtests.gov.
The CDC has also simplified recommendations on who should get vaccinated for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. The agency now recommends that all adults age 75 and up, as well as those 60 to 74 at increased risk for severe RSV disease, get vaccinated. Those risk factors include having chronic heart or lung disease, a weakened immune system, certain medical conditions like severe obesity and severe diabetes, and living in a nursing home.
The RSV vaccine is not annual, meaning people who got one last year don’t need to get another one at this time, the CDC said. Those who didn’t can get it on the same visit as their flu and COVID shots.
An RSV vaccine is also available for expectant mothers at weeks 32 to 36 of pregnancy to pass protection on to their fetuses. An RSV antibody is available for babies and some young children, too.
“All of these vaccines prevent the worst of these infections,” Cohen said. “That means fewer visits to the doctor, fewer hospitalizations, and more time to enjoy the fall and winter with family and loved ones.”
By Dan Walters, CalMatters
This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Two decades ago, when California got serious about reducing or even eliminating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, its political leaders weighed two potential tactics about industrial emissions.
The state could impose direct facility-by-facility limits, generally favored by climate change advocates. Or it could set overall emission reduction goals that would gradually decrease and auction off emission allowances, assuming their costs would encourage reductions.
The latter, known as cap-and-trade, was favored by corporate interests as being less onerous and was adopted, finally taking effect in 2012.
Since then, the California Air Resources Board has conducted quarterly auctions of emission allowances, collecting a total of $35 billion dollars so far, which, in theory, is being spent on projects that would reduce emissions.
The revenues have varied from year to year, but they have generally increased as the emission caps have declined. Since reaching a peak of $8.1 billion in the 2023-24 fiscal year, however, auction proceeds have been declining.
Roughly half of the money has been given to utilities to minimize cap-and-trade’s impact on consumer costs. However, the program has been widely criticized as a de facto tax on gasoline and other fuels, which were already among the most expensive of any state.
The remaining revenues have been deposited into a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that governors and legislators have tapped for various purposes, not all of them connected to emission reductions. In a sense, it’s been a slush fund.
Last year Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature overhauled the program in two bills, Senate Bill 840 and Assembly Bill 1207. The program was extended, it was renamed as cap-and-invest and new priorities for spending auction proceeds were set.
Notably, the state’s cash-strapped and long-stalled bullet train project would get a flat $1 billion a year, rather than the 25% share it had been getting. Project managers hope that lenders will advance enough money to complete its first leg in the San Joacim Valley; the plan is to repay the loans from the $1 billion annual cap-and-invest allocation.
Early this year, the Air Resources Board released new regulations to implement the legislative changes but faced criticism that they would increase consumer costs. That led to a revision in April that softens the rules’ impact — most obviously on refiners who have been threatening to leave California — but environmental groups are very critical.
The April version would also sharply reduce net revenues from emission auctions, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, providing barely enough for the $1 billion allocation to the bullet train and another $1 billion for the governor and Legislature to spend. Other programs that have been receiving cap-and-invest support, such as wildfire protection and housing, would probably get nothing.
The program has been tapped in recent years to backfill programs that a deficit-ridden state budget could not cover, so the projected revenue drop would exacerbate efforts by Newsom and legislators to close the state budget’s yawning gap.
“The (Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund) is a relatively small portion of the overall state budget, but it has been a noteworthy source of funding for environmental and other programs in recent years,” the state Assembly’s budget advisor, Jason Sisney, says in an email. “Collapse of its revenues would change the state budget process noticeably. The state’s cost-pressured general fund seemingly would be unable to make up much, if any, of a significant (Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund) revenue decline at this time.”
When Newsom presents his revised budget this week, he may reveal how he intends to cover the cap-and-invest program’s shortfall, particularly whether he will maintain the $1 billion bullet train commitment that project leaders say is vital to continuing construction of its Merced-to-Bakersfield segment.
It could boil down to bullet train vs. wildfire protection.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Vance says Trump cares about Americans finances amid Iran debate
Vance pushes back on claims about Trump and says Americans finances matter as the administration weighs Iran and nuclear diplomacy.
Vice President JD Vance announced on Wednesday, May 13 that the Trump administration will be deferring $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements from the state of California, as part of a new initiative to root out fraud in federal health programs.
The topic of California’s hospice care fraud has been a major focus of scrutiny by state leadership, members of President Donald Trump’s administration, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s critics. In his announcement, Vance claimed that the administration was set on deferring these funds “because the state of California has not taken fraud very seriously.”
“There are California taxpayers and American taxpayers who are being defrauded because California isn’t taking its program seriously,” Vance said during a press conference.
Notably, this decision was part of Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force’s plan to implement a six-month nationwide, data-driven moratorium on new Medicare enrollment for hospices and home health agencies.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is led by Dr. Mehmet Oz, is set to use this six-month moratorium to conduct investigations and review data on Medicare programs, with the hopes of removing hospice and home health agencies that are suspected of committing fraud.
“Today we’re shutting the door on fraud — preventing new bad actors from entering Medicare while we aggressively identify, investigate, and remove those already exploiting them,” Oz said. “This is about protecting patients, restoring integrity, and safeguarding taxpayer dollars.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the administration’s action “unlawful” and noted that his office would be “carefully reviewing all available information” and may challenge the administration’s decision to threaten “Californians’ rights or access to critical services.”
“Once again, California appears to be targeted solely for political reasons,” Bonta said on X.
“The Trump Administration is planning to defer over $1 billion in Medicaid funding for vital programs that help seniors and people with disabilities remain safely in their homes.”
Bonta and his office have attempted to counteract criticism that the state does not take action against hospice fraud.
In April, Bonta announced that the California Department of Justice had arrested five people in connection with a major health care scheme in Southern California that defrauded taxpayers of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.
“For years, California has led the charge to protect public programs from fraud and abuse,” Newsom said in the press release on April 10. “We hold accountable to the fullest extent of the law anyone who tries to rip off taxpayers and take advantage of public programs, particularly those as sensitive as hospice care.”
Newsom has yet to publicly respond to the administration’s decision to defer California’s Medicaid reimbursement.
However, shortly after Vance made the announcement, Newsom’s press office blasted the decision on X.
“We hate fraud. But that’s NOT what this is,” Newsom’s press office posted on X. “Vance and Oz are attacking programs that keep seniors and people with disabilities OUT of nursing homes. Pretty sick.”
Noe Padilla is a Northern California Reporter for USA Today. Contact him at npadilla@usatodayco.com, follow him on X @1NoePadilla or on Bluesky @noepadilla.bsky.social. Sign up for the TODAY Californian newsletter or follow us on Facebook at TODAY Californian.
California
California girls’ track and field stars speak out as Gavin Newsom’s Title IX crisis grows
Reese Hogan would have a very different set of medals if the rules were different in California.
It’s her third straight year competing against a trans athlete in the California girls’ track and field state tournament. She would have taken first place in the high jump all to herself in the sectional preliminaries last Saturday, if only biological females were allowed to compete.
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Now she’ll compete against a trans athlete in the sectional finals this weekend, representing her Christian high school, Crean Lutheran. It will mark one year since she went viral on social media for stepping up from the second-place spot on a medal podium up to first place, after a trans athlete who took first place stepped off.
“This is my third year competing against a transgender athlete, and last year I was stripped away of a CIF Title, and I basically worked my whole career to get to that point,” Hogan said on “Fox News at Night” on Tuesday. “It’s just really dissapointing to go into a competition knowing you already lost.”
CALIFORNIA TRACK ATHLETE BRIEFLY POSES ON 1ST-PLACE PODIUM AFTER LOSING TO TRANS ATHLETE, RECEIVES PRAISE
Her Crean Lutheran teammate, Olivia Viola, has been right there with Hogan throughout the three years of competition against trans athletes.
“I haven’t heard nearly enough adults come out and say anything. A lot of them like to say that they agree with you, that they’re proud of you for speaking up now, but they won’t do it themselves,” Viola said. “Just because it doesn’t affect every adult out there doesn’t mean it’s not worth standing up for.”
California has legally allowed biological males to compete in girls’ sports since a state law was enacted in 2013. The state’s education agencies are engaged in a federal Title IX lawsuit with President Donald Trump’s administration for commitment to upholding that state law.
A source at Governor Gavin Newsom’s office previously provided a statement to Fox News Digital in response to news that a “Save Girls Sports” rally, which the two girls attended, would be held at last Saturday’s meet.
“The Governor has said discussions on this issue should be guided by fairness, dignity, and respect. He rejects the right wing’s cynical attempt to weaponize this debate as an excuse to vilify individual kids. The Governor’s position is simple: stand with all kids and stand up to bullies,” the statement read.
“California is one of 22 states that have laws requiring students be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school sports consistent with their gender identity. California passed this law in 2013 (AB 1266) and it was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown.”
At the rally, Hogan spoke and fired back at Newsom’s office for the statement.
“The recent statements coming from Governor Gavin Newsom’s office have made it clear that there is no intention of creating a safe, fair, and equitable environment for female high school athletes. Him and his office have gone as far as calling young girls bullies for speaking up for what we believe in,” Hogan said.
“The governor himself has admitted that males competing in women’s sports is unfair, yet nothing is being done to protect girls who train every day to compete on a level playing field.”
CALIFORNIA ATHLETE SAYS SHE CHANGES CLOTHES IN HER CAR TO AVOID SHARING A LOCKER ROOM WITH TRANS ATHLETE
California high school girls wear “Protect Girls Sports” shirts at a postseason track meet at Yorba Linda High School on May 10, 2025. (Reese Hogan/Courtesy of Reese Hogan)
Viola also rejected the “bully” assertion in Tuesday’s interview.
“I think his statement is manipulative, and it’s just completely untrue,” Viola said. “He’s saying stand up for all kids, yet he’s essentially trying to silence us… these girls are not bullies. They make a point, we all make an point to say we are not against any individual athlete, we are against California’s policies,” Viola said.
“We believe athletes deserve dignity and respect, and that’s why we believe women deserve the dignity of having their own category.”
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Crean Lutheran High School senior track and field star Reese Hogan speaks at a ‘Save Girls Sports’ rally. (Courtesy of Alyssa Cruz)
Both Viola and Hogan will compete at the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Section Final on Saturday in Moorpark, California.
And just like last year, there will be a podium ceremony after the competitions.
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