In anticipation of a possible huge surge in coronavirus patients in the coming weeks, Gov. Newsom is taking on a new effort to expand its health care workforce. The governor said that they are asking interested people to visit healthcorps.ca.gov.
Those individuals who want to sign up should meet these qualifications:
- Be 18 years old or older
- Be eligible to work in the United States
- Have a passport, social security card or valid driver’s license
- Be a nursing or medical student, or have a valid CA license for clinical practice
- Have no certification actions or negative licensure (for certified or licensed professionals)
Volunteers will get malpractice insurance coverage or be paid. According to Newsom, authorities are presently figuring out the budget. The budget will come from state and funding.
The governor announced this initiative as the state saw a doubling of coronavirus patients in hospitals. Patients in intensive care units also tripled four days. Assistance to under-employed foreign medical graduates and unemployed health care workers will help strengthen the workforce. This will also produce more jobs and vast opportunities for Californians who are struggling with unemployment, labor secretary Julie Su said.
The state is expecting the number of infections to rise as more and more people wait for their test results. More people still need to be tested. Aside from testing, state authorities are working hard to expand hospital capacity by 5,000 beds, and buy around 10,000 ventilators.
Furthermore, Newsom said that health care workers are dealing with protective gear shortage across the state. According to Nathan Fletcher, county supervisor, they are fighting as much as they can to deal with the issue.
Newsom pledges more coronavirus testing capacity with new laboratory
Governor Newsom met a self-imposed November 1 deadline to expand the state’s day-to-day coronavirus testing by putting together a new lab in Santa Clarita. He said that the expects it to soon start to process 40,000 COVID-19 tests a day, and then eventually ramp it up to 150,000 tests. That is double the capacity of the state.
California’s decision to create its very own $25 million laboratory was in response to the lack of federal government action around coronavirus testing. To date, California has administered over 18 million tests. The results are expected within 24 to 48 hours.
Coronavirus testing has been one of the biggest challenges for California, most especially during the start of the pandemic. With low testing and PPE supplies, it took many months before the state could process 100,000 tests daily. Even then, according to experts, it was still not enough to contain the virus in a huge state of this size.
