California became the first US state to formally shift to an “endemic” approach to COVID-19, as California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced a plan that emphasizes prevention and quick reaction to outbreaks over mandated masking and business shutdowns.
The milestone, nearly two years in the making, envisions a return to a more normal existence with the help of a variety of initiatives and billions of US dollars in new spending to more quickly spot surges or variants of SARS-CoV-2, add healthcare workers, stockpile tests, and push back against false claims and other misinformation.
“We are moving past the crisis phase into a phase where we will work to live with this virus,” he said during a news conference from a state warehouse brimming with COVID-19 pandemic supplies in Fontana, east of Los Angeles.
Photo: AP
The first-term Democrat, who last year survived a recall election driven by critics of his governance during the pandemic, promised the state’s nearly 40 million residents that as the surge of the Omicron variant fades, “we’re going to keep them safe and we’re going to stay on top of this.”
A disease reaches the endemic stage when the virus still exists in a community, but becomes manageable as immunity builds.
However, Newsom said that there would be no definitive turn of the switch, unlike with Wednesday’s lifting of the state’s indoor masking requirements or an announcement expected on Feb. 28 of when precisely schoolchildren can stop wearing face coverings.
There would be no immediate lifting of the dozens of remaining executive emergency orders that have helped run the state since Newsom imposed the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order in March 2020.
“This pandemic won’t have a defined end. There’s no finish line,” Newsom said.
The WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. With Omicron fading in many parts of the world, some countries have begun planning for the endemic stage.
However, no US state has taken the step Newsom did and offered a detailed forward-looking plan.
Republicans have been frequent critics of Newsom’s handling of the pandemic and were quick to disparage his latest effort.
California Republican chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson called it “an extra-large helping of word salad” and renewed the call to “follow the lead of other blue states and end his state of emergency or lift his school mask mandate.”
Newsom’s plan sets specific goals, such as stockpiling 75 million masks, establishing the infrastructure to provide up to 200,000 COVID-19 vaccinations and 500,000 tests per day in the event of an outbreak, and adding 3,000 medical workers within three weeks in surge areas.
Newsom’s administration came up with a shorthand acronym to capsulize key elements of its new approach: SMARTER, which stand for shots, masks, awareness, readiness, testing, education and Rx, a reference to improving treatments for COVID-19.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS