As COVID-19 cases shatter records in Silicon Valley and hospital capacity dwindles, San Jose lawmakers took steps to ensure essential workers receive paid sick leave until June. In the absence of federal COVID-19 paid sick leave protections, the San Jose City Council unanimously voted Jan. 5 to is extend local sick leave benefits until mid 2021. Under...
Santa Clara County considers penalties for inequitable COVID-19 vaccine distribution
Santa Clara County officials are publicly worrying whether area health care providers will stick to the guidelines when it comes to distributing COVID-19 vaccines, and deliberating what the county could and should do if they don’t. Already, in at least two cases so far, private health care providers in California — including one in the...
New COVID-19 relief fund dedicated to East San Jose businesses
East San Jose businesses and nonprofits struggling to survive may have gained a new lease on life through a new community COVID-19 relief fund. San Jose Planning Commissioner Rolando Bonilla said the East San Jose business community, which has experienced difficulty accessing government aid, was left out of conversations about solutions to help them weather...
Study: Silicon Valley is mostly working from home — and service industry is paying the price
In non-pandemic times, Voyager Cafe in downtown San Jose would be teeming with customers, often workers lined up looking to get their morning coffee or something to go with their lunch. Not anymore. Revenue is down 40% to 50%, according to co-owner Sameer Shah. Voyager’s location inside the San Pedro Square Market means it’s walking...
Businesses must close employee break areas in Santa Clara County under COVID-19 restrictions
Santa Clara County health officials kicked off 2021 by adding new restrictions on businesses — they must now close their employee breakrooms. While officials told San José Spotlight they had issued previous “guidance” on breakrooms, an earlier version of the county’s directive did not include any language about closing indoor employee breakrooms. There are new...
Santa Clara County receives nearly 100k COVID-19 vaccines, warns against New Year’s Eve parties
In urging people to stay home on New Year’s Eve, health officials shared a grim fact: There are only 28 available intensive care unit beds in all of Santa Clara County. And while the county has received nearly 100,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, infection rates continue to surge. The case rate is at 50 COVID-19...
Which Santa Clara County COVID-19 vaccine tier are you in?
The approval of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States is no immediate cure for the pandemic. With Moderna and Pfizer vaccines in short supply, only a select group of people can receive the immunization — at least for now. In Santa Clara County, that means health officials must administer vaccines to people in distinct tier groups...
San José Spotlight’s top 10 stories of the year: COVID-19, homeless, hate crimes
To many people, 2020 felt like one of the longest years ever. South Bay residents contended with a deadly pandemic that got worse as the year wore on, the economic and social fallout of measures to contain the disease, civil unrest in the streets and wildfire smoke in the sky. There was no shortage of news....
Faith in COVID-19 vaccine facing uphill battle in Black community
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, something about the crisis felt familiar to André Chapman. Chapman, the CEO and founder of the San Jose nonprofit Unity Care, saw widespread misunderstanding of the disease, similar to that of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1980s. While AIDS fell out of mainstream news, it continued to wreak...
What to know about COVID-19 vaccines in Santa Clara County
Hope for turning the tide of the coronavirus pandemic has finally arrived. People around the world are rolling up their sleeves to receive the first doses of the just-approved COVID-19 vaccines. The medicines come at a dire moment, with the epidemic raging around the county, state and country, causing record numbers of deaths. Here are answers to...