Newsom Announces New Focus on Hard-Hit Central Valley

With COVID-19 cases spiking across California's agriculture-rich Central Valley, Gov. Gavin Newsom says the state will direct tens of millions of dollars and other resources to the region to help stanch the virus' spread.

Standing at the Diamond Foods headquarters in Stockton on Monday, Newsom noted that COVID-19 positivity rates in the eight-county Central Valley region are around double the state average of 7.5%, reaching as high as 18% in some communities.

Those rates, he said, are driven by the reality that farm and food processing workers have to keep working, pandemic or not.

Particularly hard-hit, Newsom said, are Latinos — a community that is suffering inordinately from COVID-19 throughout the state, but even more so in the Central Valley.

"This disease continues to spread, but not evenly," Newsom said. "It is disproportionately impacting certain parts of state."

Newsom announced that the state will put $52 million of a $499 million Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant into supporting public health efforts in eight counties: San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern. He said local public health officials will be assisted by what he deemed "strike teams" — groups to help evaluate needs in those communities and develop plans to address them.

The three Central Valley teams, according to his office, will also examine outbreaks in factories, long-term care facilities, high-density housing developments and agricultural workplaces.

"Today we're announcing a $52 million investment, new dollars that will be put into the Central Valley, into the eight counties, to improve our isolation protocols, our quarantine protocols, our testing protocols and to enhance our health care workers by providing more support as well as more personnel," Newsom said.

— Marisa Lagos (@mlagos)