Santa Clara County’s COVID-19 cases are still on a downward trend, meaning the county could move to the state’s orange tier next Wednesday. Santa Clara County Public Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody confirmed at the county’s Health and Hospital Commission meeting Wednesday that if the county continues to see decreasing COVID cases and hospitalizations through...
Former Santa Clara County nonprofit leader accused of bullying staff
Katherine Harasz won praise from Silicon Valley’s biggest politicos for her work, but some current and former employees characterize her as a leader who created a hostile environment during her time as executive director of the Santa Clara County Housing Authority. Some of the complaints about Harasz’s leadership are outlined in a 140-page document filed...
What Santa Clara County renters, landlords should know about evictions
Renters affected by the pandemic likely took a sigh of relief when, early this year, California lawmakers extended the statewide ban on evictions for those facing financial hardships until the end of June. The law also created a rental assistance program to help lift lower-income renters out of rental debt. The program started taking applications...
Lacking childcare: Santa Clara County’s employees would turn down promotions
Almost two-thirds of Santa Clara County employees say juggling work and childcare has made it impossible to achieve their career goals—even saying they’d turn down promotions. “It’s horrible because you feel like a bad worker and a bad parent at the same time and you’re basically just trying to keep your child alive,” an employee...
Blue Shield, Santa Clara County argue over COVID vaccine shortage
The company running California’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts refused a request for more vaccines for Santa Clara County from Kaiser Permanente, county leaders said today. Kaiser is one of the region’s largest health care providers but has been given too few doses of the vaccine to cover its patients. That sparked the creation of the county’s “no...
State’s COVID-19 vaccine plan hurts Santa Clara County’s neediest
A state plan to send more COVID-19 vaccines to at-risk communities could actually harm poor people in Santa Clara County. Earlier this month, the state began setting aside 40 percent of all vaccines for low-income ZIP codes. The 400-plus ZIP codes are chosen by evaluating their respective “healthy places index,” a function of more than...
Santa Clara County should adopt technology to help homeless, audit says
Across the country groups that work with unhoused populations have ditched paper records for new technologies, but not in Silicon Valley. According to a report released last month by State Auditor Elaine Howle, the coalition of groups that work with homeless residents in Santa Clara County rely on outdated methods to track the people they...
One-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine arrives in Santa Clara County
After weeks of waiting, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine just arrived in Santa Clara County. Today, the county received 7,500 doses of the new COVID-19 vaccine, according to public health officials. Additional doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are expected to arrive in Santa Clara County on March 23. The highly-anticipated Johnson & Johnson’s...
Longtime South Bay education leader jumps into supervisorial race
With Marc Anthony’s “Vivir Mi Vida” playing buoyantly in the background, Claudia Rossi announced Sunday she will be running for Santa Clara County supervisor. “This is going to be a long fight,” Rossi said. “We have a long journey and we have very well funded opponents that want that seat.” Rossi, a practicing nurse who...
After publishing wrong COVID-19 vaccine numbers, Santa Clara County blames technical error
Santa Clara County published inaccurate demographic data on its COVID-19 vaccination dashboard and only updated the errors after San José Spotlight brought it to officials’ attention. “There’s a discrepancy in the data,” Santa Clara County spokesperson Roger Ross confirmed Thursday. “We have been looking into it.” The majority of the data on the county’s vaccination...