(TNS) - Jan. 10—Elizabeth Apana is 72 years old. She moved to Santa Rosa in 2019 because her cardiologist told her she needed surgery to stabilize the rhythm of her heart, and it would be too risky to have the procedure done in Hawaii, where she lived at the time. She also has congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma. She is eager to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, for obvious reasons.

"Mentally, it's going to make me feel a whole lot better, because I know I won't have to worry about catching COVID, and I won't have to worry about giving it to other people," Apana said. "I feel it will be a new chance at life."

After spending most of 2020 telling small businesses to close and limit their customers, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday proposed $4 billion worth of state spending he says will help them survive in 2021.

Newsom was the first U.S. governor to impose a statewide stay-at-home order because of the coronavirus pandemic in March, earning praise at the time for decisive action to contain the spread. But a recent surge of cases has caused those restrictions to linger into 2021, shuttering bars, restaurants, barber shops, gyms and movie theaters for months at a time while imposing strict limits on capacity inside retail stores during the year’s busiest shopping season.

A magnitude 3.9 earthquake rattled parts of Northern California on Sunday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed.

The earthquake was reported at 6:44 a.m. about 14 miles from Chico.

(TNS) - Dec. 20—Orange County logged another single-day record on Sunday, Dec. 20, for new reported cases of the coronavirus as a winter surge spreads through its communities and packs local hospitals.

The additional 4,606 cases reported Sunday by the OC Health Care Agency in its daily update put the cumulative total since tracking began at 124,428 people testing positive for the virus.

Some 1,682 people needed hospitalization as of Sunday, 375 of them in intensive care units.

Predictive modelers told California regulators on Thursday that the state’s antiquated rules for calculating wildfire risk when setting property insurance rates discourage innovative mitigation measures that could ultimately reduce losses.

Nancy P. Watkins, a principal and consulting actuary for Milliman, said during a webcast on “home hardening” hosted by the state Department of Insurance that California is one of only three states that doesn’t allow insurers to use catastrophe modeling to determine wildfire risk. Rates must be based on historical losses.

Watkins said that is a “very simple” method of ratemaking. “It’s kind of like expecting the Rocky Mountains to be flat because we just drove through Kansas and Missouri,” she said.

Powerful gusts pushed flames from a wildfire through Southern California canyons on Thursday, one of several blazes that burned near homes and forced residents to flee amid elevated fire risk for most of the region that prompted utilities to cut off power to hundreds of thousands.

The biggest blaze began late Wednesday as a house fire in Orange County’s Silverado Canyon, where gusts topped 70 mph.

“When crews arrived it was a fully engulfed house and the winds were extremely strong and they pushed flames into the vegetation,” said Colleen Windsor, a spokeswoman for the county’s Fire Authority.

California has asked hospitals to ramp up their coronavirus testing amid a surge of new cases, urging them to test health care workers at least once per week while testing all new patients before admitting them.

California reported 7,787 confirmed coronavirus hospitalizations on Monday, with 1,812 of those patients in intensive care units. Statewide, 75% of intensive care beds are filled and state officials expect to reach capacity by mid-December.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently completed its in-person fall semester. And as the nation watches the COVID-19 virus surge, the school continues the virus testing program that has worked so well since it began in August.

The COVID-19 positivity rate for the entire student body and faculty for the past seven days was 0.45 percent. The number of total tests given since the inception of the program? A staggering 908,158. But it’s that rate of testing and contact tracing that reduced the positivity rate from a high of nearly 3 percent in late August to what it is now.

The California Public Utilities Commission has raised concerns over certain deficiencies that it says could affect PG&E Corp.’s ability to provide safe and reliable service, the power provider disclosed in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

The regulator, in a letter dated Tuesday, said it will require remediation on specific issues identified in the San Francisco-based utility’s wildfire mitigation plan progress reports.