(TNS) - Ramona Moll remembers grappling with an elderly dementia patient who showed all the signs of COVID-19: fever, difficulty breathing and a persistent cough. The patient had tried to bite her while the staff struggled to keep him from tearing off his mask and oxygen tubes, she said.

Days later, Moll said she began to develop a cough and grew so weak she could barely speak or climb stairs. She wound up hospitalized herself and tested positive for COVID-19. She became one of the first employees at UC Davis Medical Center to test positive for the disease.

New Mexico has a new tool that could help crews get an early jump on any wildfires that might break out.

The State Forestry Division will be getting real-time alerts via a satellite tracking system designed by the Santa Fe-based startup Descartes Labs. The program can detect temperature increases from new fires using data that’s updated every few minutes. Text messages will then be sent to State Forestry with the location and a detailed map.

When nine police officers showed up to make an arrest near Melrose Avenue in the Bronx last Wednesday, none wore a mask or gloves to protect them from coronavirus.

Similar scenes play out all over the city daily: officers making arrests, walking their beats and responding to 911 calls without protective gear, according to interviews with nearly two dozen New York City officers and scenes witnessed by Reuters.

(TNS) - In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, EMS workers face unique challenges among healthcare workers.
They’re walking into the “great unknown.”

“We’re going into people’s homes. The hospital is a really tough environment but they have to keep cleanliness to a certain standard,” said Administrative Director of EMS at Staten Island University Hospital (SIUH) Dominick Battinelli.

That hospital standard of cleanliness doesn’t exist in a house -- especially in a home where a patient who is potentially positive for COVID-19 has been cooped up for days.

A magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck Sunday morning off the coast of Northern California, the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed.

The quake hit at 8:27 a.m. about 50 miles west of Ferndale, a coastal town of 1,300 people.

Pacific Gas & Electric said it will plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 2018 fire in Northern California that killed 84 people and decimated three towns.

The utility said in a statement will also admit to a single count of unlawfully starting a fire.

Large-scale prisons are cities unto themselves and as such are taking some drastic steps that states and cities are doing to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has undertaken a number of those steps to protect inmates, and staff and their families.

California’s governor on Thursday issued an unprecedented statewide “stay at home order” directing the state’s 40 million residents to hunker down in their homes for the foreseeable future in the face of the fast-spreading coronavirus pandemic.

Governor Gavin Newsom’s directive, effective immediately, marks the largest and most sweeping government clampdown yet in the worsening public health crisis brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak, which he predicted could infect more than half the state within eight weeks.

The heightened fear and anxiety that COVID-19 is causing people worldwide brings vulnerable targets for cyber hackers.

“We are living in a heightened time of cyber risk. Cyber criminals will take advantage of public fear and due diligence health measures to generate coronavirus-themed phishing attacks. We should be aware of unsolicited COVID-19 emails with specious links or attachments,” says Virginia Tech expert David Simpson.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which is responsible for workplace safety regulations, certain workers are at higher risk than others for exposure to the coronavirus and the disease COVID-19.

Nurses, doctors, lab and morgue workers are among those at highest risk.