Following a sunny weekend when Californians flocked to beaches and hiking trails despite a government order to stay home, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday a “soft closure” of state parks to curb the spread of coronavirus.

As California braced for an onslaught of desperately ill coronavirus patients, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans over the weekend to open two new hospitals, and President Donald Trump said the federal government will ship a number of mobile hospital units to the state, pay for National Guard deployments and deploy the San Diego-based naval hospital ship Mercy to Los Angeles.

As schools, businesses, governments and most other venues go increasingly dark in the effort to restrict the pandemic, one question has persisted: What to do about child care?

According to a letter Gov. Newsom sent to President Trump, state models project that more than half of the state could become infected with the novel coronavirus over the next two months. What does this projection mean in context?

Social distancing may be good for public health these days, but it isn’t good for the California economy.

In ordering California’s nearly 40 million residents to stay at home, Gov. Gavin Newsom brought myriad county and city public-health directives under a single umbrella in one of the largest restrictions on civic life in American history.

Across the state, the need for food assistance is growing amid the coronavirus pandemic as businesses shut down, hundreds of thousands of Californians lose wages and seniors and the ill are isolated at home. Nonprofits are coming up with creative solutions to meet the demand.

In response to the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic and the rapidly evolving set of challenges it presents for businesses and workers, in addition to public health, the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce has launched a Rapid Response tool on its website.

Nytch, a Woodland-based mobile app, connects independent, offline businesses to local shoppers looking for specific items.

The coronavirus has upended operations for businesses around the Sacramento region, including Lion, which was founded in 2008 and operates and repairs all-electric school buses.