Support For State’s Health Care Facilities

Governor Gavin Newsom press conference at COVID vaccine clinic in LA

Sacramento, CA — With a possible winter pandemic surge on the horizon, Governor Gavin Newsom has extended provisions implemented to expand the health care workforce during the pandemic.

The executive order signed by the governor that runs through March 31 will continue to allow out-of-state medical workers to treat patients in California and allow emergency medical technicians and others to keep administering vaccines and providing other related services. Additionally, health care facilities will still have the flexibility to allow for other uses of resources, including using parking lots for vaccination sites.

“Thousands of people lost their lives, thousands of people on life support, close to death,” stated Newsom as he reflexed on last winter while stating that is why state officials are “doing everything in our power to prepare.”

The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) relayed that the state’s preparations since the start of the pandemic have the state in a much better place to withstand any winter surge. A spokesperson for OES stressed that the state “has all of the expanded capacity from the mobile field hospitals and supply caches that were acquired during the pandemic as well as the contracts to bring in nursing and medical personnel that were put in place previously.”