Hispanic Business Grant Opportunity: 2021 Small Business Grant Application: UPS + United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Deadline to Apply: June 11, 2021-UPS is committed to keeping Latinx-Owned small businesses moving forward. Covid-19 has impacted small businesses across the board and minority small business community has been especially hard hit.
Grant Criteria:
- The applicant must be a small business with less than 20 full-time employees.
- The applicant must be a majority Hispanic-owned business with an active EIN or ITIN number.
- The business must have been in operation for at least 9 months from the date that you complete this form.
- The business registered main address must be located in the U.S. states or territories.
- Typical grant amounts will be $5,000 per business that is selected.
If you have any technical difficulties filling out this grant application, please contact Brianna Dimas at bdimas@ushcc.com.
Click Here to Learn More + Apply
California is reopening. What does that mean?
The City of Pasadena will drop its mask requirements for fully vaccinated people, with some exceptions, effective Tuesday, the city’s Public Health Department announced.
Aligning with the state’s and the federal government’s masking guidance, people who have received full vaccinations can forgo masks, except when:
• On public transit, including airplanes, ships, ferries, trains, subways, buses, taxis and ridehailing vehicles. People still must wear masks at transit hubs, such as terminals, marinas, train and subway stations.
• Inside TK-12 classrooms, child care and youth settings
• In health care settings, including long-term care sites
• In correctional facilities
• In homeless and emergency shelters, and cooling centers Unvaccinated people will still be required to wear masks in indoor settings and businesses, such as retail stores, restaurants, theaters and at meetings and government offices, according to the city’s Public Health department. Employers will also be required to comply with Cal/OSHA prevention standards, officials said.
You can access all Pasadena Public Health Department orders, protocols and information here: https://www.cityofpasadena.net/covid-19/#dashboard
The rules, orders, regulations and procedures for Pasadena closely mirror those of the State of California and the County of Los Angeles as well as US CDC guidelines.
The last COVID chapter: Back to normal (from the LA Times): Most state restrictions end Tuesday, allowing businesses to reopen and easing mask rules.
By Luke Money and Phil Willon
California has finalized plans for its full economic reopening next week, beginning the process of unwinding more than a year of pandemic-related restrictions and emergency actions while continuing efforts to persuade the skeptical and reluctant to get vaccinated.
Starting Tuesday, the state will remove most remaining restrictions on businesses and significantly relax mask-wearing rules for those who are vaccinated — two substantial efforts made possible by the steady retreat of COVID-19.
And officials said Friday that Gov. Gavin Newsom will also begin rescinding dozens of emergency actions he imposed by executive order in response to the pandemic, a process that will play out over several months.
Coronavirus-related capacity restrictions and physical distancing requirements will be lifted at almost all businesses and other institutions starting Tuesday.
Gone will be the system of color-coded tiers that for months kept counties on pins and needles as they awaited word for how widely activities could resume. Businesses that have long operated at less-than-complete capacity will be able to throw open their doors.
And Californians who are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 will be able to shed their face masks in most nonwork situations.
But while the seesawing restrictions have dominated the headlines, Newsom’s executive actions have also had a sweeping impact on the lives of Californians, though in ways not always readily apparent.
Newsom has issued 58 executive orders since the beginning of March 2020, when he declared a state of emergency due to the outbreak.
They have allowed local governments to meet and hold hearings electronically, suspending the state law requiring those meetings to be physically open to the public, provided extensions for businesses filing state taxes, and required school districts to keep paying teachers and staff even if campuses were closed and students were in remote learning. He also prohibited water agencies from cutting off service to customers for not paying their bills, allowed marriages to be conducted by videoconference and provided liability protections to healthcare workers administering COVID-19 vaccinations.
Many of Newsom’s executive orders have multiple provisions affecting a variety of state agencies and services. Dozens of those already have expired or were superseded by legislative action. But most remain.
Most will be rescinded by Newsom on June 30, including a licensing waiver for California manufacturers producing critical goods needed for the pandemic response. Others, such as the waiver allowing government meetings to be held online, will remain in place until Sept. 30. The official state of emergency Newsom declared on March 4 in response to the pandemic will remain in place. That declaration became the foundation for the almost five dozen executive orders Newsom issued over the intervening months.
Some of Newsom’s emergency actions will endure for an undetermined amount of time, including a provision that allows some pharmacy workers to administer vaccines.
While California’s reopening journey has been rocky to say the least — two previous attempts last spring and fall eventually had to be abandoned following corresponding surges in infections, hospitalizations and deaths — officials and many health experts are confident the state can avoid a similar fate this time around.
California has for several months recorded one of the lowest coronavirus case rates in the country, and is now enjoying a relatively robust level of vaccine coverage.
Nearly 40 million COVID-19 vaccines have been administered statewide, and 68.5% of eligible Californians — those ages 12 and up — have gotten at least one dose, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That coverage is not uniform across the state, however, and officials note that less-vaccinated areas or communities will remain more vulnerable to outbreaks.
“We would love for all Californians to make that choice to get vaccinated, but we’re also realistic about a number of people who just aren’t interested. They don’t see it as the way for them,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s health and human services secretary, said during a virtual conversation hosted by the Public Policy Institute of California. “And we have made a tremendous amount of effort, with great success, to get people who might have stayed on the sideline longer had they not been given the personal attention: answer their questions, knock on their door, make it convenient and easy.” Among the state’s most visible efforts is its recently launched COVID-19 vaccine lottery — the latest winners of which were selected Friday through a randomized drawing. All told, 30 Californians have been selected to win $50,000 apiece as part of the Vax for the Win program. The drawings will culminate Tuesday with the selection of 10 grand-prize winners, each of whom will take home $1.5 million.
Any California resident who has received at least one vaccine dose is automatically entered for a chance at the cash prizes — though the money won’t be paid out until after the winner has completed his or her inoculation series.
Officials have said the goal of the incentive program is simple: to win over as many holdouts as possible and push the state closer to the level of herd immunity necessary to finally defeat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Having a wide swath of the population inoculated, officials say, will help armor California against any potential new surges.
Not all restrictions are going away come Tuesday. Those who aren’t fully vaccinated will still need to keep their masks on in businesses and other public settings indoors. And everyone, regardless of inoculation status, will have to mask up while in transit hubs or aboard public transportation; in healthcare settings and long-term care facilities; indoors at K-12 schools, childcare facilities or other youth settings; in homeless shelters, emergency shelters and cooling centers; and in correctional facilities and detention centers.
Organizers of indoor events with more than 5,000 people, such as a basketball game, will also be required to verify that attendees are either fully vaccinated or have tested negative within 72 hours of the event’s start time.
The same will be recommended, but not required, for organizers of outdoor events with more than 10,000 attendees. In those instances, venues will have the option of allowing unvaccinated and untested attendees, provided those people wear a mask at all times.
Workplaces also will still be subject to any relevant rules set by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA.
As Ghaly emphasized Friday, “a lot of things change,” come June 15, “but not our vigilance.” “June 15 means, to me, a big pat on the back to so many Californians for making sacrifices, you know, rolling with the punches on something that we’ve never seen before, at least in our lifetime,” he said.
Times staff writer Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.
CalOSHA Rules: This is subject to change as CalOSHA pulled the recomendation for reconsideration following diffecences with the US CDC: Last week, the Cal/OSHA standards board recommended relaxing physical distancing and masking requirements for fully vaccinated workers, and other adjustments to align with the June 15 reopening. If the standards are approved by the Office of Administrative Law in the next 10 calendar days, the standards are expected to go into effect no later than June 15. The revised standards include the following:
Face Coverings: Fully vaccinated workers without COVID-19 symptoms do not need to wear face coverings in a room where everyone else is fully vaccinated and not showing symptoms. In rooms where everyone is not vaccinated, face coverings continue to be required for everyone regardless of vaccination status. Both fully vaccinated and unvaccinated workers without symptoms do not need to wear face coverings outdoors except when working at “outdoor mega events” with over 10,000 attendees, which may include events or theme parks.
Physical Distancing: When the revised standards take effect, employers can eliminate physical distancing and partitions/barriers for employees working indoors and at outdoor mega events if an employer provides respirators, such as N95s, to unvaccinated employees for voluntary use. After July 31, physical distancing and barriers are no longer required (except during outbreaks) provided all unvaccinated employees are offered respirators for voluntary use.
Exclusion from the Workplace: Fully vaccinated workers who do not have COVID-19 symptoms no longer need to be excluded from the workplace after a close contact.
Special Protections for Housing and Transportation: Special COVID-19 prevention measures that apply to employer-provided housing and transportation no longer apply if all occupants are fully vaccinated.
Employers will still be required to maintain a written COVID-19 Prevention Program with the following changes:
Employers must review the California Department of Public Health’s Interim guidance for Ventilation, Filtration, and Air Quality in Indoor Environments.
COVID-19 prevention training must now include information on how the vaccine is effective at preventing COVID-19 and protecting against both transmission and serious illness or death.
Federal Labor Mandates related to COVID-19: The Biden administration has exempted most employers from longawaited rules for protecting workers from the coronavirus, angering labor advocates who had spent more than a year lobbying for the protections.
The Labor Department included only health care workers in its new emergency temporary standard published Thursday.
The rules require employers to draw up a virus protection plan, and tighten requirements for recording and reporting COVID-19 cases among workers. They also require employers to provide workers with paid time off for COVID-19-related absences, including getting vaccinated and recovering from the shot’s side effects.
Rather than issue mandatory rules for other workplaces, the Biden administration released new nonbinding guidance that relaxed some recommendations.
Most workplaces where people are fully vaccinated no longer need to provide any protection from the coronavirus, according to the guidance issued by Occupational Health and Safety Administration, the federal agency responsible for protecting workers. In a separate order, Biden’s administration also lifted a 25% cap of employer capacity inside federal buildings, though it kept in place flexible remote work policies.
The decision comes as many stores and other companies are already relaxing mask and other protection policies in response to new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But it also represents a step back from President Joe Biden’s earlier indications that he would reverse the Trump administration’s refusal to issue mandatory protection rules for workers.
The new standard “represents a broken promise to the millions of American workers in grocery stores and meatpacking plants who have gotten sick and died on the frontlines of this pandemic,” Marc Peronne, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents 1.3 million workers, said in a statement.
Numbers and info: More people have died from Covid-19 already this year than in all of 2020, according to official counts, highlighting how the global pandemic is far from over even as vaccines beat back the virus in wealthy nations. It took less than six months for the globe to record more than 1.88 million Covid-19 deaths this year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data collected by Johns Hopkins University. The university’s count for 2021 edged just ahead of the 2020 death toll on Thursday. These numbers underscore how unevenly the pandemic spread around the globe, often hitting poorer nations later, but before they had access to the vaccines that have benefited Europe and the U.S.
Pasadena health officials reported a single COVID-19 infection detected in Pasadena on Thursday as the city, county and state all prepare for the lifting of pandemic restrictions next week. No new deaths have been documented in a week, and the two most recent deaths reported on June 3 involved people who had died months earlier, but only recently been confirmed as COVID-19 fatalities. The city’s pandemic totals stood at 11.304 confirmed cases of the virus and 349 deaths, according to Pasadena Public Health Department data. An average of 1.1 new cases were detected each day over the prior week, records show.
Pasadena Public Health Department and Los Angeles County Department of Public Health officials announced Wednesday that they would realign their masking policies to coincide with those of the state as of June 15.
Masks won’t be required for fully vaccinated people, with exceptions including riders on public transit; in K-12 schools’ in healthcare settings; in detention and correctional facilities; and in homeless and emergency shelters, authorities said.
Where masks will still be required, Pasadena Public Health Director Dr. Ying-Ying Goh urged the public to comply.
While masks will no longer be required in many places, Huntington Hospital Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. Kimberly Shriner urged the public to remain considerate of others who choose to continue wearing masks.
Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Dr. Barbara Ferrer reported another seven COVID-19 deaths in the county on Thursday, lifting the overall death toll to 24,414, City News Service reported.
Another 220 cases were also announced, raising the cumulative total from throughout the pandemic to 1,245,771.
State figures indicated there were 240 people hospitalized due to COVID-19 in the county as of Thursday, down from 244 on Wednesday, with 45 people in intensive care, the same as the previous day, according to CNS. The California Department of Public Health announced 856 new infections and 39 fatalities on Thursday, bringing the overall tallies to 3,693,362 COVID-19 cases and 62,538 deaths. The state’s average positivity rate over the prior week inched up by a tenth of a percent to 0.8%, according to CDPH data. As of Thursday, L.A. County accounted for 34% of California’s COVID-19 infections and 39% of the state’s fatalities.
Will we still have to wear masks? Maybe. From the New York Times: One week from today, after some 15 months of living under an ever-evolving set of coronavirus restrictions, California is set to reopen. Full stop.
Well, almost full stop.
Capacity restrictions on businesses are going away. There will be no more color-coded tiers. And although Gov. Gavin Newsom initially had indicated that the state’s mask mandate would remain in place even after other restrictions had been lifted, officials have since said that Californians will no longer have to wear masks, unless a private business decides to continue requiring them.
There are, however, some complexities that you or your employer might be sorting out right now.
Last week, after what Politico reported was a long and at times confusing meeting, a state board regulating workplace safety approved new standards for mask-wearing at work. And although the new rules are slightly looser than previously, they still require some masking.
Here’s what you need to know.
If I’m going into work, will I have to wear a mask? Even if I’m vaccinated?
Maybe. But depending on where you work, it may not be likely.
If you work indoors and everyone in the room is fully vaccinated, then none of you need to wear a mask.
But if even one of your co-workers is unvaccinated, you’ll all have to wear masks.
If you work outdoors and you’re fully vaccinated, you don’t have to cover your face. And if your co-workers are not vaccinated, they must wear a face covering when they’re less than six feet away from another person.
Speaking of six feet, have the physical distancing standards changed?
Yes. Starting July 31, employers can get rid of distancing requirements or partitions or barriers for people working inside and at “mega outdoor events” with 10,000 or more spectators. Until then, if you work inside or at a mega event, distancing is still required, whether or not you’re vaccinated. Employers can eliminate distancing requirements early, starting June 15, if they provide unvaccinated workers with N95 masks or other respirators.
Also, if you’re fully vaccinated and you have a close contact with someone who tests positive for the coronavirus, you don’t have to stay home unless you have symptoms.
How is California doing with vaccinations?
More than half of Californians, about 55.4 percent, have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and about 45 percent are fully vaccinated, according to The Los Angeles Times’s detailed state tracker. But fewer low-income Californians have been vaccinated than those who live in communities designated as wealthier and healthier — meaning that many in-person essential workers could still be at risk.
When do the rules go into effect?
June 15, although the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board could still revise them in coming weeks. Newsom could overrule them — say, to loosen the rules to more closely align with federal guidance — but he hasn’t said that he plans to do so, according to The Sacramento Bee.
Why is California still in a State of Emergency? From the New York Times, By Jill Cowan
California has one of the lowest coronavirus case rates in the nation. And after being one of the nation’s most stringently locked down states for more than a year, the state next week will lift nearly all of its pandemic rules in what officials have said they are confident will be a safe, triumphant reopening.
So why, then, are we still in a state of emergency? And why will we continue to be in a state of emergency, even after June 15?
Those are questions that have been raised by opponents of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who have accused him of using the ongoing emergency to wield what they describe as despotic power, claiming the proclamation as cover to impose overly strict and unnecessary regulations.
This week, a small group of Republican state lawmakers sent the governor a letter urging him to end the state of emergency or explain why he won’t.
“Ending the state of emergency is not optional,” one of the letter’s authors, Kevin Kiley, said in a tweet.
Of course, it’s important to remember that this push is coming in the midst of an effort to recall Newsom from office.
A few days before sending the letter, Kiley himself tweeted: “It hardly even matters that Gov. Newsom is refusing to end the State of Emergency on June 15.” The governor, he wrote, will “keep abusing his power until he’s removed.”
Still, the moment has created confusion about what is usually a prosaic part of the state’s response to any of the myriad disasters California so often faces: the declaration of an emergency under California’s Emergency Services Act.
State officials said this week that the pandemic state of emergency, which Newsom declared on March 4, 2020, isn’t unusual.
Formal states of emergency routinely extend long past the immediate crisis, because they allow ongoing aid programs and recovery efforts to continue without interruption.
“The emergency doesn’t stop after a wildfire is contained,” Alex Pal, chief counsel with the Office of Emergency Services, told me. “After an earthquake, the emergency doesn’t stop after the shaking ends.”
Many emergencies related to fires and floods in recent years are still active, including the one related to the devastating and deadly Camp Fire in 2018; there are still efforts to clear debris and rebuild. The official proclamation of an emergency, Pal explained, does give the governor the authority to use state assets and suspend regulations. But it also allows the state to more easily tap into federal aid.
What has set the pandemic emergency apart is its scale and breadth.
“With Covid, it was unprecedented, and it impacted every sector of the state,” Pal said. “With a fire, there’s usually one jurisdiction and a few sectors.”
Still, Alex Stack, a spokesman for the governor, said Newsom’s use of emergency authority had been effective. His orders have allowed state workers to shift into contact tracing roles and relaxed criteria for which professionals can administer vaccines. The vaccine rollout, Stack said, is something that will continue to require support from both local and federal agencies.
He said there were no estimates for when the state of emergency might be lifted. “We’re approaching this reopening date,” Stack said, adding that there are still many unknowns. “We would need to be able to keep the state of emergency in place just in case we needed to move quickly to respond to outbreaks.”
The Economy: From the New York Times: Small-business owners are worried, but hopeful: Small-business owners were hit hard by the pandemic. But according to a new survey of 10,000 businesses, conducted by Goldman Sachs and reported first by DealBook, they’re feeling pretty optimistic. That’s even as they stare down three big concerns:
Inflation: 82 percent of small-business owners are concerned about inflation, and 83 percent have experienced an increase in operating costs in the past few months.
Hiring: 71 percent of small businesses are currently hiring full-time or part-time employees, and 81 percent of those hiring say they are finding it difficult to recruit qualified candidates. (Why is it so hard to hire right now? The answer is complicated.)
Access to capital. The majority of small businesses that took a rescue loan from the Small Business Administration (82 percent) expect to exhaust their funding this summer, and less than a quarter are very confident that they will be able to maintain payroll without additional government relief. “If you have a bad financial statement from last year, which most do, you’re not able to qualify for an S.B.A. loan,” said Joe Wall, a managing director of government affairs at Goldman Sachs. “So that’s the immediate crisis that we see coming.”
Even with those worries, 67 percent of business owners think things are moving in the right direction. “People aren’t wearing their masks,” Wall said, a sign that vaccinations have helped business conditions improve, especially compared with this time last year. “So I think there’s a reason for them to be optimistic.”
Consumer prices rose at the fastest annual rate since 2008 in May, a bigger jump than economists had expected and one that is sure to keep inflation at the center of political and economic debate in Washington.
The Consumer Price Index surged 5% in May from a year prior, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists had expected an increase of 4.7%. The price index rose 0.6% from April to May, compared with forecasts for a 0.5% gain.
An index excluding volatile food and energy costs rose 3.8% from a year earlier, the briskest pace since June 1992.
Prices are rising for a range of goods and services, from airfares to used cars, as a result of data quirks, supply bottlenecks and strong consumer demand. Government officials and many economists have said much of the jump is likely to fade with time as the economy gets past a reopening bounce after a year of lockdown and supply catches up to demand. The annual number in particular is getting a boost from what’s called a base effect: The year-ago figure was depressed by pandemic- driven shutdowns, so the current figures look large by comparison.
But the strong monthly figure for May, which came on the heels of a sharp rise in April, showed that prices have been moving up quickly for more than just technical reasons. The critical question is whether those strongerthan- expected price pressures are a transient trend tied to reopening or something more persistent.
Many economists, expects inflation to settle down and remain in line with the Federal Reserve’s 2% average goal over time.
The Fed uses the Personal Consumption Expenditures measure. That gauge is closely linked to CPI, though it tends to run slightly below it.
The stakes are high on both Wall Street and Main Street. Inflation can erode purchasing power if wages do not keep up. A shortlived burst would be unlikely to cause lasting damage, but an entrenched one could force the Fed to cut its support for the economy, potentially tanking stocks and risking a fresh recession.
Outside of the base effect, the recent pop in consumer prices has been driven by two trends. The economy is reopening from a global pandemic shutdown for the first time ever, and some materials are in short supply as manufacturers try to ramp up production. Also, some households are flush with cash, which has been goosing consumer demand.
The 29.7% annual increase in used car prices reported for May is among the more striking examples of how bottlenecks are causing inflation.
Demand for cars used and new is outpacing supply in part because of a global shortage of semiconductors that has hobbled vehicle production. That chip shortage, which arose from factory shutdowns during the pandemic and one-off problems like a drought in Taiwan, could take time to resolve but it should prove temporary. In a sign that companies are finding a way to adjust to the global shortage, General Motors said earlier in June that would start to increase shipments of pickup trucks and other vehicles to dealers.
Unemployment: California workers filed the fewest unemployment claims for the week that ended June 5 since just before government agencies began to order wideranging business shutdowns to combat the coronavirus.
Statewide initial jobless claims totaled 53,000 last week, 19,000 fewer than the prior week, the U.S. Labor Department reported.
Last week’s unemployment filings in California were the lowest since the week that ended on March 7, 2020 — 15 months ago.
After that time, state and local government officials launched full-scale business lockdowns to slow the spread of the lethal coronavirus.
Nationwide, first-time unemployment filings totaled 376,000, down 9,000 from the 385,000 jobless claims that were filed for the week that ended May 29, the Labor Department reported. The U.S. claims numbers were adjusted for seasonal variations.
California accounted for 14.4% of all of the unemployment claims filed in the U.S., even though the state has only 11.8% of the nation’s labor force. The figures were derived by using comparable numbers that weren’t adjusted for seasonal volatility.
During March and April of last year, California lost a record- setting 2.71 million jobs. From May 2020 through April 2021, the state has regained 1.3 million of those lost positions. The figures mean that California remains 1.41 million jobs short of regaining what it lost just in those two months.
Nationwide, nearly 3.5 million were receiving traditional state unemployment benefits the week of May 29, down by 258,000 from 3.8 million the week before. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that job openings hit a record 9.3 million in April. Layoffs dropped to 1.4 million, lowest in records dating back to 2000; 4 million quit their jobs in April, another record and a sign that they are confident enough in their prospects to try something new.
Budget Deficit: The U.S. budget deficit hit a record $2.06 trillion through the first eight months of this budget year as coronavirus relief programs drove spending to all-time highs. The shortfall this year is 9.7% higher than the $1.88T deficit run up over the same period a year ago, the Treasury Department said Thursday in its monthly budget report.
The report showed that spending from October through May totaled a record $4.67 trillion, up 19.7% from the same period a year ago. Government tax revenue was up 29.1% to $2.61 trillion, compared to the same period a year ago.
However, this year’s figure was bolstered by tax payments made in May, a month later than the normal April deadline but a month earlier than last year’s June deadline.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020 pushing 22 million people out of work, the government has responded even more forcefully with trillions of dollars.
That support has included three rounds of direct payments to individuals, with the last payments authorized in the $1.9 trillion relief package that President Joe Biden pushed through Congress in March.
The deficit for the budget year that ended Sept. 30 totaled a record $3.1 trillion. Biden, who released his first budget earlier this month, is projecting that this year’s deficit will total $3.67 trillion and will remain above $1 trillion every year over the next decade.
Infrastructure: This is developing and may be outdated by Monday: A bipartisan group of senators is eyeing an infrastructure deal with $579 billion in new spending as part of a $1 trillion package. It could be rolled out as soon as Thursday as negotiators try to strike a deal on President Joe Biden’s top priority, according to those briefed on the plan.
The 10 senators have been huddling behind closed doors, encouraged by Biden to keep working on the effort after he walked away from a Republican-only proposal this week unable to resolve differences. The senators are briefing their colleagues privately and cautioned changes could still be made.