Health care and life sciences account for around 150,000 jobs in the Sacramento region, making the sector the largest private employer. Experts suggest that the public sector and health care may expand locally, even as the coronavirus pandemic contracts the global economy.

As the number of people hospitalized in California with the coronavirus doubled in just four days, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday sent out an urgent call seeking help from the state’s 37,000 retired and part-time health care professionals. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom expressed confidence Saturday that California has the capacity to produce enough ventilators to meet its projected needs in response to the coronavirus pandemic. But he cautioned that the state’s need could expand if the crisis worsens.  

Face masks have flown off the shelves around the United States amid the coronavirus outbreak, even though experts have advised people against wearing them unless they are sick. That has triggered a shortage for farmworkers, who wear masks to avoid inhaling pesticides or field dust.

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.

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?

Coronavirus testing has been plagued by confusion, delays and chaos, with the number of available, usable tests far outstripped by the need. The situation, health care providers and experts say, has impaired their ability to know how many people have the virus — but a significantly larger number, they suspect, than that confirmed by state and federal officials.

On a bleary Monday morning in Sacramento with the Dow Jones industrial average tanking, on its way to a 2,997 point drop and its worst day since 1987, Greater Sacramento Economic Council President and CEO Barry Broome offered advice for local business owners that he knows won’t be popular.

Six utilities serving more than 21 million Californians have announced that they will not shut off customers’ power for nonpayment as the coronavirus continues to disrupt daily life.

California’s governor took extraordinary action on Thursday, clamping down on public gatherings, ordering residents to follow public health rules, authorizing the state to commandeer hotels and medical facilities and whipping emergency officials into action to proactively stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.