A study shows California’s stay-at-home order in response to the coronavirus seems to have reduced wildlife collisions, as decreased traffic resulted in fewer collisions with mountain lions, deer and other large animals.

A study by the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis found traffic declined by about 75% after the emergency health regulation went into effect in March, The Ventura County Star reports.

The number of animals struck and killed by vehicles also fell, including a 58% decrease in fatal crashes involving mountain lions between the 10 weeks before and 10 weeks after the order was in place.

The number of California workers’ compensation claims for COVID-19 continues to climb, according to a new report compiled by the California Workers’ Compensation Institute.

Data from the Division of Workers’ Compensation shows that as of Aug. 10, there were 9,515 claims reported for the month of July, bringing the total for the year to 31,612 claims, or 10.2% of all California job injury claims reported for accident year 2020. Those claims include 140 death claims, up from 66 reported as of July 6.

(TNS) - Before the coronavirus pandemic, Irene Teper worked full time as a primary care doctor seeing mostly healthy patients for their routine checkups or non-emergency care. That all changed in March.

“We have been going kind of nonstop since March,” said Teper, who works at MarinHealth in Novato. “There would be weeks where we would work on weekends as well. It’s literally nonstop.”

As the pandemic worsened, Teper was tapped by MarinHealth to establish an adult care clinic where doctors would treat patients showing COVID-19 symptoms. Now Teper is assisting her colleague, internal medicine doctor Elizabeth Lowe, with the mobile testing of the county’s most vulnerable residents in nursing homes and residential care centers where cases had spread rapidly in recent months.

The number of COVID-19 cases in California stood at 554,160 cases Sunday, according to state health department officials.

The California Department of Public Health said in a release that there have been 8,826,119 tests conducted in California, an increase of 118,592 over the prior 24-hour reporting period.

There have been 10,293 COVID-19 deaths in California since the start of the pandemic, the department reported.

Hermosa Beach officials said the city plans is using a private consulting firm to help police enforce an ordinance requiring face coverings in public areas, The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

Figures showing California has slowed the rate of coronavirus infections may be in doubt because a technical problem has delayed reporting of test results, the state’s top health official said.

For days, California hasn’t received full counts on the number of tests conducted nor the number that come back positive for COVID-19, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said Tuesday.

California’s attorney general and state and local agencies are investigating whether Amazon.com Inc. has taken adequate steps to protect its workers from the coronavirus pandemic, according to a court filing on Monday.

Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health and the San Francisco Department of Public Health “have all opened investigations into Amazon’s practices” around the pandemic, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman wrote in the filing.

(TNS) - From Corcoran and Avenal state prisons in the arid Central Valley to historical San Quentin on the San Francisco Bay, California prisons have emerged as raging COVID-19 hot spots, even as the state annually spends more on inmate health care than other big states spend on their entire prison systems.

The new state budget taking effect July 1 authorizes $13.1 billion for California’s 34 prisons, housing 114,000 inmates, more than three times what any other state spends. That sum includes $3.6 billion for medical and dental services and mental health care — roughly what Texas spends to run its entire 140,000-inmate prison system.

In the Listos California Campaign for preparedness, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) set out to reach a million within the state with preparedness training and messages. Those numbers will be released by the governor’s office next week.

But as that campaign was underway, the coronavirus pandemic hit, forcing a reorganization and creating opportunity. In March, the approach to training and preparedness — typically training in small groups such as a social club or a church group — transitioned online.

Unions representing 17,000 workers at Walt Disney Co.’s Disneyland Resort in California have told the state’s governor they are not convinced the theme park will be safe enough to reopen by the company’s July target date.

In a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday, the unions said they had been in discussions with Disney since mid-March when Disneyland was closed to help curb the coronavirus pandemic. The resort in Anaheim, in southern California, houses the Disneyland theme park and the California Adventure Park, both of which the company aims to reopen July 17.

An appellate judge on Wednesday stayed a lower court’s order barring Gov. Gavin Newsom from issuing directives that might conflict with state law, freeing him to take additional executive actions during the coronavirus pandemic.

Sutter County Superior Court Judge Perry Parker on Friday temporarily blocked Newsom’s executive order requiring in-person balloting stations even as every registered voter is mailed a ballot for the November election. The judge also sided with two Republican lawmakers by more broadly requiring Newsom to refrain from new orders that might be interpreted as infringing on the Legislature’s responsibilities.