“Please, please let us double down on the work we have done,” Mr. Newsom said on Monday. “I’m not trying to take away any enthusiasm, I’m trying to be honest and forthright.”
Speaking for the first time since the election was called, Mr. Newsom’s tone was a mix of optimistic and foreboding.
[Track coronavirus case numbers by California county.]
Case numbers, he said, had begun to rise across the state, as had hospitalizations. Although testing has ramped up, reaching almost 190,000 tests reported over the past day, the state’s average positivity rate over the past two weeks had risen to 3.7 percent after reaching a low of 2.5 percent early last month.
Cold weather has arrived in some areas and holidays continue to approach, which officials have worried is leading to more in-person, indoor gatherings. Counties across the state were likely to be moved into more restrictive reopening tiers this week.
[Read more about California’s tiered reopening plan.]
Still, Mr. Newsom lauded California’s response and said that while he looked forward to working “hand in glove” with a Biden administration on the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, the state was pressing ahead with its independent vaccine safety review.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Biden announced that he had tapped a team of health experts, including three from the University of California, San Francisco, to help guide his Covid-19 response — a move Mr. Newsom celebrated as evidence of California’s deep pool of scientists and renowned researchers.
But he emphasized that figuring out who should get what are expected to be extremely limited doses of a vaccine will still be difficult, nuanced work that requires an understanding of California’s specific underserved communities.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/us/kamala-harris-senate-replacement.html
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