NGLCC + GrubHub Grant for Restaurants owned by LGTBQ Persons- Deadline to Apply: October 12, 2021
After more than two years of turmoil among the restaurant industry, NGLCC and Grubhub have come together to provide vital assistance for LGBTQ+-owned and allied restaurants, cafes, bars serving food, and other eating establishments. The NGLCC & Grubhub Community Impact Grant program provides a financial lifeline to those impacted by COVID-19 with grants expected to range from $5,000 to $100,000.
To be eligible for the Community Impact Grant, applicants must: 1. Be an LGBTQ+-owned or LGBTQ+ ally-owned restaurant, bar or café that serves food. 2. Demonstrate loss of business due to COVID-19. This information will not be shared beyond the judging panel and will only be used for eligibility purposes. 3. Provide proof that you are an LGBTQ+-owned or allied establishment.
The United States surpassed 700,000 deaths from the coronavirus on Friday, a milestone that few experts had anticipated months ago when vaccines became widely available to the American public.
An overwhelming majority of Americans who have died in recent months, a period in which the country has offered broad access to shots, were unvaccinated. The United States has had one of the highest recent death rates of any country with an ample supply of vaccines.
The new and alarming surge of deaths this summer means that the coronavirus pandemic has become the deadliest in American history, overtaking the toll from the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which killed about 675,000 people.
City Ramps Up Proof of Vaccination or Negative COVID Test Requirements for Patrons of Bars, Breweries, Nightclubs, Lounges, and Mega Events: Saying the number of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 persons in the past 7 days in Pasadena increased rapidly to “High” and “Substantial” levels as has the testing positivity rate, the Pasadena Public Health Dept. on Monday issued stricter health rules.
The new order mandates that people attending mega events will have to show proof of full vaccination or proof of pre-entry negative result on a COVID-19 diagnostic test result in order to attend the event.
Customers receiving indoor service in bars, breweries, nightclubs and lounges, and the employees in those businesses must provide proof of at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine by Oct. 7 and full vaccination by Nov. 4. These establishments primarily serve adults and already require patrons to show proof of age; children under 12 are exempt from these requirements.
Self-attestation cannot be used as a method to verify an attendee’s status as fully vaccinated or as proof of a negative COVID-19 test result.
Although the new order does not apply to restaurants, vaccination verification for customers dining indoors is strongly recommended.
The requirement for vaccine verification or a negative test within 72 hours prior to attending an outdoor mega event aligns with President Biden’s recently announced national COVID-19 action plan, Path Out of the Pandemic, and applies to outdoor venues and events with more than 10,000 attendees that are ticketed and/or have controlled points of entry to a well-defined area, such as sporting and music events
Outdoor mega event organizers must prominently place information on all communications, including reservation and ticketing systems, to ensure guests are aware of the proof of pre-entry testing or full vaccination status requirement, as well as the requirement for everyone to wear a mask while in attendance, and acceptable modes of verification.
The new order goes into effect on October 7 at 12:01 a.m.
As 95% of Eligible Pasadenans Are Inoculated With at Least 1 COVID-19 Vaccine Dose, New Infections Decline: A day after local authorities announced that 95.2% of eligible Pasadena residents have received at least COVID-19 vaccine dose, while 88.3% of the local population was fully vaccinated, newly reported infections continued at a modest rate.
Wednesday, 18 new infections were logged across the city, officials said. No new deaths were reported.
In total, the Pasadena Public Health Department had recorded cumulative 13,205 cases of COVID-19 and 361 deaths since the pandemic began. The city’s average number of daily infections over the prior week declined to 13.
In the Pasadena Unified School District, officials reported 10 new infections among students over the past week, including six cases reported on Tuesday alone. Two cases among staff members were detected over the prior week.
In what he called another national first in the fight against COVID-19, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday that California will require children attending schools in the state to be vaccinated against the disease just as they are for a host of other ailments once federal regulators fully approve the shots for their age groups.
Newsom said the requirement will roll out in phases for grades 7-12 and then for grades K-6. It will become effective in the school term following full U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of the vaccine for children in those grades, he said. The administration expects it to apply to grades 7-12 next July. The requirement doesn’t apply to child care or colleges.
In August, the FDA granted full formal approval of the Pfizer shots for children ages 16 and older after the company provided evidence from extensive trials demonstrating its safety and efficacy. In May, the FDA granted emergency use authorization, an expedited process, for Pfizer’s two-shot vaccine for children ages 1215, and full approval could come before the end of the year.
The emergency approval process has only just begun for children ages 5-11. The Moderna and the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccines remain under emergency use authorization only for adults ages 18 and older.
A number of school districts already have required their eligible students 12 and older to get the vaccine, starting with Culver City Unified in Los Angeles County, which adopted a policy in August.
But the process has sometimes generated controversy.
Huntington Hospital representatives reported 16 COVID-19 patients being treated at the facility as of Wednesday. Seventy-five percent were unvaccinated.
Five patients were being treated in intensive care units, according to Huntington. Four of them were unvaccinated.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported 1,436 new COVID-19 cases and 31 deaths on Wednesday, raising the county’s pandemic totals to 1,457,672 infections and 26,078 fatalities.
The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients within the county dropped to 892, representing the first time the number of admitted patients has declined below 900 since late-July, the agency said in a written statement.
The county-wide daily test positivity rate was measured at 1.2%.
L.A. County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer urged vaccination among pregnant people and new mothers, and affirmed the vaccines’ safety for them, as statistics show that category is lagging behind when it comes to getting inoculated against COVID-19.
Nationally, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports only 31% of pregnant people are fully vaccinated, officials said.
County public health officials had documented 12,944 infections among pregnant people as of Sept. 28.
“Twelve pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19 tragically passed away,” the statement said.
It is possible, although rare, for COVID-19 to be transmitted to infants from their mothers, county health officials added.
“It is troubling to see the low rates of vaccination among pregnant women given the increased risk of serious COVID illness associated with pregnancy for the mother-to-be and her newborn,” Ferrer said. “We encourage pregnant women to talk with their doctor or midwife to get the facts about how they can best protect themselves from the virus. Sadly, misinformation continues to circulate leading to avoidable tragedies for moms and their babies.”
More information regarding pregnancy and COVID-19 is available on the L.A. County Department of Public Health website at publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/Coronavirus/docs/vaccine/WomenAndCOVIDvaccine.pdf.
Public Health continues to urge and offer vaccination to women who are pregnant,
The California Department of Public Health announced 6,493 infections and 130 deaths across the state on Wednesday, bringing the totals to 4,482,881 COVID-19 cases and 68,517 fatalities.
The statewide weekly positivity rate was recorded at 2.5%, according to CDPH data.
As of Wednesday, L.A. County represented 33% of California’s COVID-19 infections and 38% of the state’s deaths.
Treatment: The drug maker Merck said on Friday that its pill to treat Covid-19 was shown in a key clinical trial to halve the risk of hospitalization or death when given to high-risk people early in their infections.
The strong results suggest that a new wave of effective and easy-to-use treatments for Covid will gradually become available in the United States, though supply is likely to be limited at first. Merck said it would seek emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for its drug, known as molnupiravir, as soon as possible. The pills could be available by late this year.
Merck’s drug would be the first pill to treat Covid-19; it is likely to be followed by a number of other antiviral pills that other companies are racing to bring to market. They have the potential to reach more people than the antibody treatments that are being widely used in the United States for high-risk patients.
Commercial Evictions: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to extend a moratorium on evictions of commercial tenants through the end of January, but residential tenants are expected to lose similar protections under state law this week.
Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, who recommended renewing protections for retail and industrial tenants who have been unable to pay rent, explained that the county can no longer offer the same deal to residential renters.
The state’s eviction moratorium expired Sept. 30 and is not expected to be renewed. However, residential tenants who fell behind in paying rent may be eligible for assistance under the state’s rent relief program.
Applications can be submitted at https://housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/ until available funding runs out.
The state has paid out roughly $300 million of an available $541 million under two separate allocations of federal COVID-19 funding, and there are more than 100,000 applications already in the queue, according to county staffers.
Although the Pasadena eviction moratorium continues into the foreseeable future, the state’s moratorium ended Thursday.
In March 2020, the Pasadena City Council approved a moratorium on evictions for nonpayment of rent by tenants experiencing financial impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The moratorium was amended by the council the following May to include additional provisions.
According to the amended moratorium, local residents will have six months to pay back rent after the local emergency ends. But that’s not the case statewide.
“The end of the eviction moratorium will expose significant vulnerabilities in our housing market,” said local activist Patrice Marshall McKenzie. “I fear for the rise in displacements, the rise in evictions, and the lack of affordable, safe options for housing. We need to address the cost and availability of housing from multiple fronts, including affordability, homeownership expansion, increasing availability of units, and supporting our unhoused community. The issue is complex, but the resources and expertise exist to develop solutions. Is there political will to do so?”
Vaccines: The nation’s largest school district can immediately impose a vaccinemandate on its teachers and other workers, after all, a federal appeals panel decided Monday, leading lawyers for teachers to say they’ll ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued a brief order late in the day that lifted a block of the mandate that a single appeals judge had put in place Friday. After an adverse ruling from a Brooklyn judge, a group of teachers had brought the case to the appeals court, which assigned a three-judge panel to hear oral arguments Wednesday. But the appeals panel issued its order Monday after written arguments were submitted by both sides.
Economy: The Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge of inflation climbed in August at the quickest pace in 30 years, data released on Friday showed, keeping policymakers on edge as evidence mounts that rapidly rising prices are poised to last longer than practically any of them had expected earlier this year.
The numbers come at a pivotal moment, as inflationary warning signals abound. Used car prices show signs of picking up again, costs for raw goods like cotton and crude oil are increasing and companies continue to experience pain from persistent supply chain disruptions.
That is stoking fears in Washington and on Wall Street that although rapid price gains will eventually fade, the adjustment could drag on for months. A longer burst of inflation raises the chances that consumers will change their expectations and behavior, paving the way for more permanent price increases.
It is a high-stakes juncture for policymakers. The Fed is preparing to withdraw some of its support for the economy soon, but it would prefer to do so only gradually, given the millions of Americans who remain out of work. The White House is trying to pass two big policy packages at the core of President Biden’s economic agenda, and Republicans have begun wielding every new inflation data point as an argument against more federal spending.
Lingering uncertainties about the future of the COVID-19 pandemic makes the pace of California’s economic recovery equally uncertain, although the state is still expected to outpace the nation as a whole, according to a recently released UCLA economic forecast.
“Although California began a significant recovery later than some other states due to the public health interventions in the state, we expect the California recovery to ultimately be, once again, faster than the U.S.,” UCLA Anderson Forecast Director Jerry Nickelsburg wrote in the report released Tuesday.
“This is due to two reasons. First, Delta notwithstanding, the better public health outcomes should result in a more rapid return to normalcy,” Nickelsbug stated.
“Second,” he wrote, “the move to new ways of work and social interaction will disproportionately impact California through its technology-laden sectors. The leisure and hospitality sector will be the last to recover due to the depth of the decline in this sector, the slower return of restaurant and bar services demand, and the sub-sectors dependent upon international tourism demand.”
Nickelsburg said higher-income technical services will see a considerably faster recovery, along with residential housing construction thanks to increasing demand.
“In spite of the recession, the continued demand for a limited
housing stock, coupled with low interest rates, leads to a forecast of a relatively rapid return of homebuilding,” he wrote. “Our expectation is for 123K net new units in 2021 and continue to grow to 139K for 2023. Needless to say, this level of home building means that the prospect for the private sector
building out of the housing affordability problem over the next three years is nil.”
He predicted a third-quarter unemployment rate of 7.2% in the state, with the average for the year as a whole settling at 7.6%, followed by 5.6% next year and 4.4% in 2023.
Nickelsburg noted that the pandemic continues to cloud the economic future.
“Since the pandemic-induced recession began in March 2020, we have asserted that the course of the pandemic, and the public health policy response to it, would be critical for the economic forecast,” he wrote. “As well, we have pointed out that we did not know, and at this time we still do not know what the future will bring with respect to the pandemic. Today there is less clarity, and therefore, the level of uncertainty remains high.”
Top Federal Reserve officials emphasized on Monday that the labor market is far from completely healed, underlining that the central bank will need to see considerably more progress before it will feel ready to raise interest rates. “We still have a long way to go until we achieve the Federal Reserve’s maximum employment goal,” John C. Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in a speech Monday afternoon.
Leading Fed officials — including Williams, Lael Brainard and Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair — have given similar assessments of the outlook in recent days and weeks. They have pointed out that the economy is swiftly healing, bringing back jobs and normal business activity, and that existing disruptions to supply chains and hiring issues will not last forever.
But they say the recovery is incomplete and that it’s worth being modest about the path ahead, especially as the Delta variant demonstrates the coronavirus’s ability to disrupt progress.
At the Fed’s September meeting the central bank’s policy-setting committee clearly signaled that officials could begin to pare back their massive asset-purchase program as soon as November. They have been buying $120 billion in government and governmentbacked securities each month.
The speeches on Monday emphasized that as officials prepare to make that first step away from full-fledged economic support, they are trying to separate the decision from the Fed’s path for its main policy interest rate, which is set to zero.
Central bankers have said they want to see the economy return to full employment and inflation on track to average 2% over time before lifting rates away from rock bottom.