In Pasadena:
For the first time since the start of the pandemic, Pasadena marked the passage of four full weeks without a single reported COVID-19 death on Friday, according to city data. Fifteen new infections were detected in the city, bringing the overall total to 2,905 cases of the novel coronavirus. The death toll stood at 129, with no fatalities reported in the city since Oct. 8.
Officials documented 20 new COVID-19 infections in Pasadena on Wednesday, signaling that transmission of the virus in the community has been increasing. Of the 20 new cases, several were contracted from family members, while at least one was linked to a holiday party, and another was linked to a workplace outbreak, said city spokesperson Lisa Derderian said. In total, Pasadena has seen 2,878 infections and 129 fatalities, according to city data. The last death attributed to the virus was reported on Oct. 8. Pasadena had seen an average of 10.7 new daily infections over the prior week, according to city data.
Huntington Hospital reported treating 18 COVID-19 patients on Friday.
Pasadena health officials on Wednesday reported the first known case in the city of a “rare but serious” complication affecting young COVID-19 patients known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C. A total of 43 cases of MIS-C have been documented countywide since the onset of the pandemic, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. No deaths linked to the condition have been reported. MIS-C is a rare but serious complication associated with COVID-19. It’s a condition where different body parts, such as the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs, become inflamed. All 43 children diagnosed with MIS-C in L.A. County were hospitalized, and nearly half of them were treated in intensive care units, according to county health officials. About 26 percent of them were under 5, while 37 percent were between 5 and 11, and another 37 percent were between the ages of 12 and 20, officials added.
LA County:
Officials at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported 2,108 new infections and 23 deaths on Friday. This is the third consecutive day of new cases over 1,800 and the first time the number of new cases reached over 2,100 since mid-August, the agency said in a written statement. In all, the county had recorded 317,656 cases of COVID-19 and 7,157 fatalities since the start of the pandemic. Across L.A. County, 821 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 on Friday, officials said. Twenty-nine percent of them were being treated in intensive care units. County officials reported 817 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 on Wednesday. It represented the first time daily hospitalizations have topped 800 since mid-September, health officials said.
L.A. County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said the increase is believed to be due to people not following social distancing guidelines. As of Wednesday, Los Angeles County represented 33 percent of California’s total COVID-19 cases and 40 percent of the state’s fatalities.
The County of Los Angeles Great Plates Delivered program has been extended through Tuesday, December 8. Great Plates Delivered offers three (3) free home-delivered meals a day from local restaurants to qualifying older adults and adults over 60 who are at high-risk of COVID-19 as determined by the CDC. This effort aims to assist those in need of home-delivered meals and to help get our local restaurant, hospitality, and transportation industries back to work. To learn more, click here for a quick video about Great Plates Delivered. To watch in Spanish, click here.
Interested in Receiving Meals? To be eligible for this program, individuals: Must meet age requirements;are 65 or older; OR are 60-64 and have been diagnosed with, exposed to or at high risk of COVID-19 as defined by the CDC;are unable to prepare or obtain meals; are not currently receiving assistance from other state or federal nutrition assistance programs such as CalFresh/SNAP;must live alone or with one other program-eligible adult;must earn between $25,520 to $74,940 (single household) or between $34,380 to $101,460 (two-person household) per year; must live in unincorporated LA County or a city that does not offer its own Great Plates Delivered program (Pasadena does).To apply online in English, click here. To apply online in Spanish, click here.Have questions? Meal applicants can e-mail greatplates@wdacs.lacounty.gov or call 211 for multi-lingual services.
COVID-19 Safety Compliance Certificate Program for business owners and employees in Los Angeles County. A program for Los Angeles County businesses currently permitted to operate to voluntarily self-certify that they are fully implementing the required COVID-19 Protocols from the Los Angeles Department of Public Health (Public Health). This process will help business owners follow the required Protocols and maintain their operations with as much safety as possible for their staff, customers, and visitors. The COVID-19 Safety Compliance Certificate is not required, but it is recommended. It will demonstrate to the public that your business is complying with required Protocols. Read More
California: The California Department of Public Health reported 5.338 new infections and 66 new deaths on Wednesday, raising 
A new laboratory in Valencia is expected to give California the ability to process more COVID-19 tests each day with faster turn-around times. Governor Gavin Newsom cut the ribbon on the new laboratory on October 30, then toured the $25 million facility with Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, and Government Operations Secretary Yolanda Richardson.
Coronavirus infections in the U.S. set a record for the fourth straight day on Saturday, as cities and states introduced new restrictions to combat a new wave of cases. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows contracted coronavirus last week.The resurgence is not confined to any one part of the country: 23 states have recorded more cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch. The more than 102,800 new cases reported Wednesday surpassed a record of more than 99,000 set on Oct. 30, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The total number of confirmed cases in the U.S. neared 9.5 million.
Other News:
From the SBA: Did you take out a Paycheck Protection Program loan? Here are four steps to apply for forgiveness.
- Contact your lender and complete the form
- Compile documentation
- Submit the forgiveness form and documentation to your lender
- Communicate with your lender throughout the process
Stocks surged this week as investors around the country angled to position for the outcome of the 2020 elections, a blockbuster stretch that led major indexes to their best week since April. The results of the races have been rippling through financial markets, igniting a stock rally, driving bets in derivatives while stoking moves across the bond market, from corporate debt to Treasurys and munici- pals. Even bitcoin prices have rallied to heights not seen in more than two years.
OSHA has recently revised its reporting obligations for employers for COVID-19 cases. The revised rule represents a significant change and an improvement over the prior rule. Key changes have been made for employers to the Hospitalization Reporting Rule, Fatality Reporting Rule and Detailed Recording Obligations. With the current reporting requirements already so confusing and difficult to follow, employers need to be more cautious and stay in-tune with these changes on how to investigate and record COVID-19 cases amongst your workforce. Employers also have to be made aware of the latest information regarding completion of OSHA logs and the electronic posting of injury information to OSHA’s electronic record keeping website for 2021. You should also be aware of the latest OSHA regulatory changes in effect to stay complaint and away from red flags. With so much confusion around these practices, failure to comply has resulted in employers taking financial losses as penalties and fines. Participants will also receive an update regarding OSHA, its priorities, and its regulatory agenda updates for 2021.
The Wall Street Journal reports: The number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 in the U.S. topped 48,000 on Monday, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project, continuing a monthslong increase and hitting the highest point since mid-August. The increase comes as as new confirmed infections are rising across the nation, and public health officials and epidemiologists worry that the coming holiday season will accelerate the surge.
Security camera manufacturers are asking government regulators for tighter oversight of temperature-detecting cameras, saying that a flood of new products prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic endangers public safety by providing inaccurate fever screenings. Since the spring, hundreds of merchants have begun selling telethermographic systems—a category that includes dozens of devices such as cameras and kiosks that use infrared scanning and thermal imaging to detect body heat from a distance. School administrators, managers of government office buildings and corporations have been purchasing the technology and installing it at entrances of buildings in the hope that it will screen out people with fevers, a key symptom of the virus. But many of these devices aren’t capable of providing accurate body temperature readings that would indicate fever, manufacturers and experts in infrared technology say. Instead, many of them are used to accurately detect security risks such as unauthorized people entering a building, or even the presence of a concealed weapon. Others are used to take the temperature of industrial machines. But few are accurate enough to detect fevers in humans.
Supermarkets are accelerating the shift to e-commerce, devoting more of their floor space to fulfill digital orders in response to customers’ growing reliance on online shopping. In addition, many are reassessing inventory and expanding sections that have drawn more purchases in recent months, including frozen food and meat.
The Labor Department reported Friday that employers added 638,000 jobs in October, a figure that would have been larger without a drop in temporary census workers.
A look at the industries that are adding jobs suggests this recovery is relatively broad-based. In particular, some of the sectors that would be expected to keep bleeding jobs if we were settling in for a protracted recession are rebounding. Construction employment rose by 84,000 in October, retail rose by 104,000, and transportation and warehousing was up by 63,000. Temporary help services employment rose by 109,000, a sign that employers need more labor even if they aren’t willing to make permanent hires yet.
But the engines behind much of the gain — bars and restaurants, which added 192,000 jobs, and retailing, which picked up 104,000 — represent some of the jobs most at risk from a resurgence in coronavirus cases.
While the unemployment rate continues to drop, falling from 7.9 to 6.9 percent in September, job gains are slowing and the number of long-term unemployed people continues to grow, according to The New York Times. The country has seen 11 million jobs return but is still 11 million down from before the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of people who have been without work for 27 weeks or more grew to 3.6 million in October, an increase of 1.2 million. Many of the job gains have been in retail and service sectors, but rising Covid cases could threaten those jobs again as temperatures around the country go down and people spend more time indoors.
The labor-market recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has been uneven across demo- graphic groups, as Hispanic men benefit from gains in industries such as construction while women—especially from racial minority groups—lag behind, Labor Department data show.
Pandemic-driven shutdowns and slowdowns were especially severe in the restaurant, hos- pitality and parts of the retail sector, which disproportion- ately cost Black and Hispanic women their jobs. Meanwhile, white men, who are more federal relief measures and the onset of winter—which could force patrons indoors—are likely to weigh on the labor-market recovery, economists said.
“In normal times getting 600,000 jobs on a monthly basis would be great,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “But in this environment, you’re still looking at a recovery that’s go- ing to take a couple of years to get us back out of this hole. If job growth moderates further, then we’re talking about three or four years, and that’s a very long time.” Mr. Daco noted that temporary workers accounted for 1 in 6 new jobs last month, a sign employers remain cautious about the outlook.
In October, 3.7 million people said they were unemployed due to a permanent job loss, the Labor Department said. That exceeded the number who said they were on a temporary layoff, at 3.2 million, for the first time since February. That suggests that while millions of people have been recalled to jobs they lost this spring, most of those still unemployed will need to find new work, a challenging prospect at a time when the economy appears to be downshifting into a slower phase of the recovery.
The report came as the nation awaited results of Tuesday’s elections, which will determine federal economic policies in the coming years, including on taxes, spending, regulation, health care and labor issues.
The economy overall has rebounded quickly from the recession. Gross domestic output grew a record 7.4% in the third quarter—or at a 33.1% annual rate—the Commerce Department reported.
The unemployment rate in Pasadena remains at about 15%.
For at least a year, California has barred insurance companies from dropping homeowners in parts of the state affected by wildfires, a move affecting some 2.1 million households, Joseph Serna reports for the Los Angeles Times. It’s a sign of the enormous financial strain wildfires exacerbated by climate change are putting on families, local communities and their economies, and on the insurance industry. Some residents in fire-prone areas have seen premiums jump by hundreds of percent a year, while others forego insurance entirely because of the steep rates.