In California: State reaches vaccine goal, reopenings on the way

Plus: Native American COVID deaths believed under-reported and the Moraga coyote has been captured and killed

I'm Winston Gieseke, philanthropy and special sections editor for The Desert Sun here in sunny Palm Springs, where it is illegal to walk a camel down Palm Canyon Drive between the hours of 4 and 6 p.m., according to california.com. Therefore, I will leave the camel be and instead bring you the latest headlines from this great state of ours.

In California brings you top Golden State stories and commentary from across the Paste BN Network and beyond. Get it free, straight to your inbox.

California reaches 2M vaccine goal: Reopenings on the way

California has administered 2 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in the state's most at-risk communities, hitting a goal that effectively swings open the doors for more business and school reopenings up and down the state.

Residents in more than a dozen counties will wake up Sunday morning with lifted restrictions as state officials loosened the requirements necessary to move out of the strictest tier of the state's reopening system due to these increased vaccinations in vulnerable communities.

"California's making good strides on achieving the commitment to delivering doses to the communities hardest hit across the state," Secretary of the California Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly said Friday.

Thirteen counties are moving from the strictest purple tier to the red tier, where indoor dining can resume as well as indoor operations at gyms, movie theaters, places of worship and more, with capacity restrictions. These counties have already reported two weeks of coronavirus numbers that meet state metrics for progression.

Those 13 counties are Amador, Colusa, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Mendocino, Mono, Orange, Placer, San Benito, San Bernardino, Siskiyou, Sonoma and Tuolumne.

Are you one of millions of Californians with disabilities or a preexisting health condition? You might be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine on Monday. The Los Angeles Times has some tips on how to get that shot.

‘No one has been trained for this much death’

Ever wonder what it's like working in a COVID ICU? Dennis Wagner, writing for USA Today, was granted rare access to a hospital's COVID-19 care units in February, where he was allowed to shadow caregivers as they tended to sick and dying patients.

What he uncovered was that as America’s medical workers struggle with the pandemic — death, suffering, fatigue, stress and fears of infection — helping families through denial, grief and anger has added to the trauma.

While hospitals offer counseling, massages, peer groups and employee bonuses, which help, one respiratory therapist told Wagner the pain builds until it just gushes out. “I cry in the car. I talk with my husband about it. I get it out,” she said. “I don’t know if it’ll ever be over.”

Meanwhile, the shock to relatives is magnified by pandemic quarantines. Unable to visit loved ones, families cannot see the disease's swift devastation and have trouble facing end-of-life decisions.

The article is quite an eye-opener. Read it in its entirety here.

Native American COVID deaths believed under-reported

Another eye-opener is a story written by Amanda Ulrich for The Desert Sun on the effect COVID has had on Native American families in California.

National studies have underscored the lopsided toll that the pandemic has had on Native Americans across the country; a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report from December determined that the COVID-19 mortality rate for American Indians was nearly double that of white Americans. But the full scope of the virus’s impact on Native American communities remains hazy, particularly in this state.

The California Department of Public Health has reported that American Indians and Alaska Natives make up 0.5% of the state’s population and 0.3% of COVID-19 deaths, with 187 to date. Experts think the true number is higher, but is being undercounted because of racial misclassification and missing data for race.

Someone who has American Indian heritage and is also Latino, for example, might be classified by the state only as the latter, or in the multiracial category, Aurimar Ayala, epidemiology manager at the California Tribal Epidemiology Center, told The Desert Sun. 

“I am 100% sure it is an underestimate,” Ayala said of the current state tally of American Indian deaths. Read more here.

'Running for her life': Mother of 4 wanted new life in America. But she died in deadly crash near US-Mexico border

When Carolina Ramírez Pérez, 32, got into a vehicle in the early morning hours of March 2, just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, she was fleeing a life of domestic violence and hoping to start again in the United States. Three of her four children, aged 2, 5 and 10, had already made the trip and were waiting for her in Southern California.

But she didn't make it. Ramírez Pérez was among the 13 killed after that packed SUV collided with a semi-truck near the U.S.-Mexico border last week, Yadira Robles of the Imperial County Coroner's Office confirmed to Paste BN.

The deadly collision happened early Tuesday in the heart of California’s Imperial Valley, a major farming region, after two SUVs were seen on surveillance video driving through a 10-foot hole in the border fence, according to Customs and Border Protection.

"She was so heroic in getting her kids to safety so they could have a better future," said Cynthia Santiago, an L.A.-based immigration attorney retained by Ramirez Perez's relatives. "Unfortunately, she lost her life as a result. But she was just doing everything she could for them because she didn't want them to grow up in those conditions."

Shasta County man has spent 7 years in jail despite not being convicted

Out of approximately 400 people incarcerated in the Shasta County Jail, none have been held longer than Michael Donald Ackley, 61, who has been detained since 2014. But unlike most who spend that long in a cell, he hasn’t been convicted of a crime. 

Ackley is in jail on suspicion of murder because he's accused of shooting and killing his best friend, whom he said he mistook for a burglar around 2 a.m. on July 1, 2014, according to investigators. Seven years later, district attorneys are still working to prove he committed second-degree murder. The case went to trial in 2018, and a jury ruled out first-degree murder but couldn’t agree on second-degree murder. One juror did not want to convict, and the hung jury resulted in a mistrial.

Ackley’s court-appointed public defender, Kathryn Barton, said she believes 2021 could be the year he makes it back to trial.

The Moraga coyote has been captured and killed

Since December, this newsletter has been reporting on a brazen coyote in Moraga who approached several unsuspecting people and bit them, including a man doing pushups on a high school football field and a 3-year-old girl in a stroller.

DNA linked all the attacks to a single coyote, who proved elusive.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Moraga coyote’s reign of terror has finally come to an end. The male coyote was captured and killed Thursday by authorities in Contra Costa County, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said Friday morning. DNA results confirmed it was animal they had been looking for.

“It is the sincere hope of the agencies that locals can recreate outdoors in the area again with significantly reduced anxiety and that the community knows that outdoor recreation is still very safe,” fish and wildlife officials said in a statement.

In California is a roundup of news from across USA Today network newsrooms. Also contributing: california.com, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle. We'll be back in your inbox next week with the latest headlines.

As the philanthropy and special sections editor at The Desert Sun, Winston Gieseke writes about nonprofits, fundraising and people who give back in the Coachella Valley. Reach him at winston.gieseke@desertsun.com.