 | | A Covid-19 vaccination site at the Forum in Los Angeles this month.Allison Zaucha for The New York Times |
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Well, the moment many of us have been waiting for has arrived: Californians 50 and older will be eligible to be vaccinated starting April 1 and residents older than 16 will be eligible starting April 15, state officials announced on Thursday, in an effort to reflect the increasing supply of doses from the federal government. |
"This is possible thanks to the leadership of the Biden-Harris administration and the countless public health officials across the state who have stepped up to get shots into arms," Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. |
Mr. Newsom said in a news conference that the state, effective immediately, would also allow health care providers to use their discretion to vaccinate family members of those who are eligible to be inoculated. |
According to current estimates, state officials expect that California will be able to get 2.5 million doses per week in the first part of April — a number that will ramp up to more than three million by the second half. |
Currently, the state gets about 1.8 million doses per week. So far, some 15.7 million vaccine doses have been administered in California, according to The New York Times's tracker, far more than any other state. But on a per-capita basis, that falls somewhere in the middle of states. |
According to The Times's vaccine tracker, an average of about 2.5 million doses per day are being administered across the entire country. |
The announcement follows weeks of intense pressure on Mr. Newsom to speed up the state's vaccine rollout, amid an effort to recall him. Experts have said his ability to fend off that campaign hinges on vaccinating millions of residents and lifting remaining restrictions, so that once residents are asked to vote in a likely recall election later this year, the state will be closer to back to normal. |
Mr. Newsom has repeatedly blamed an unpredictable and limited supply for what has been criticized as a confusing and chaotic process that left many poorer communities of color behind. |
But that move frustrated local officials in the Bay Area, where almost none of those prioritized communities were located. |
Dr. Jeffrey V. Smith, the Santa Clara County executive, recently described the program as "a fake equity plan." |
Mr. Newsom's decision to essentially outsource the allocation of doses to counties and health care providers to an insurer, Blue Shield of California, has also come under fire from numerous local officials, who have said it adds an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy to the process. |
On Thursday, standing beside the governor at a news conference, Mayor Vicente Sarmiento of Santa Ana, the Orange County seat and home to many lower-income Latinos, praised the equity plan. |
"We are eternally grateful," he said, adding that it's a misconception that Orange County is homogeneous, white and wealthy. |
Mr. Newsom also defended his plan. |
"We needed to do more and needed to do better," he said at the news conference. "We needed to do justice to our North Star, which is equity." |
Some experts were worried the move would just flood already taxed vaccine delivery systems with more people trying desperately to sign up for shots. |
"I predict continued frustration as more people become eligible but supply is not available to meet demand," Dr. Christopher Longhurst, U.C. San Diego Health's chief information officer, told me in an email. |
The state's MyTurn online appointment system has been widely dismissed as another hindrance for health care providers who already have effective ways of reaching patients. |
Still, Andrew Noymer, a professor of population health and disease prevention at the University of California, Irvine, told me that the announcement was good news. |
"I think, given the state of the administration, they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't have the doses," he said. "I think they're wary of overpromising." |
Mr. Noymer said that while it was laudable to "try to remedy centuries of inequalities which manifest themselves in the health domain," it had been in some ways counterproductive from an epidemiological standpoint to focus so much on who is eligible and when. |
"Nobody has to feel like they're cutting the line," he said. "If there's no line to cut, that's best for everyone." |
Here's what else to know today |
 | | The Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman, center, was joined by accusers of Dr. George Tyndall when she spoke in 2019 in favor of legislation extending the time allowed for filing lawsuits against the physician.Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press |
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Compiled by Jonathan Wolfe |
- The University of Southern California announced on Thursday that it would pay more than $1.1 billion to the former patients of a campus gynecologist accused of preying sexually on hundreds of patients. The staggering sum sets a record. [New York Times]
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- The state Supreme Court cut back on the state's cash bail system, allowing newly arrested defendants to be released with electric monitoring, regular check-ins, and drug and alcohol treatment. [San Francisco Chronicle]
- Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned Democrats against running in the likely recall election, predicting that Governor Newsom will win. [Politico]
- Across the country, Asian-American entrepreneurs are spending money to secure their businesses, including hiring security and limiting hours, after what they say is a sharp rise in attacks on their businesses that the authorities are not taking seriously. [Washington Post]
- The chief executives of Google, Facebook and Twitter testified at the House on Thursday about how disinformation spreads across their platforms, an issue that the tech companies were scrutinized for during the presidential election and after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. [New York Times]
- A new study published in Science found that California's pollution controls have reduced more emissions of diesel exhaust than the rest of the nation, lowering deaths from heart and lung disease. [CalMatters]
- California state prisons will begin allowing limited in-person visitations on April 10, more than a year after they were halted because of the pandemic. [AP]
- New data from the Department of Education shows that California is one of the slowest states to reopen schools fully for in-person learning. [EdSource]
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 | | In recent years, Jessica Walter was introduced to a new audience as Lucille Bluth on "Arrested Development," a zany, self-referential sitcom about a narcissistic family.Lisa O'Connor/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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Still, Ms. Walter will most likely be best remembered for her particular genius in portraying emotionally withholding matriarchs, and especially Newport Beach's own Lucille Bluth. |
As my colleague James Poniewozik wrote, that genius has been immortalized in the form of dozens of GIFs — and we're lucky to have them: "Every cutting, withering, gut-busting Lucille image that Walter left us with came from an actor who knew her character and her craft so well that she could speak an entire reality in two seconds." |
So if you've ever sent someone a Lucille meme or asked how much a banana could cost, pour a martini out this weekend for an icon.re |
Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter. |
California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley. |
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