News you don’t want to miss for Mar. 2:
1. Two health care workers in the Bay Area, including one from Alameda County, have tested “presumptive positive” for the coronavirus, KTVU reports. Both had contact with the coronavirus patient in Solano County. This brings the total number of cases in the Bay Area to five.
2. Bay Area nurses said local hospitals are ill-prepared to safely protect health care workers from the coronavirus, KRON reports. A California Nurses Association union leader points to instances at U.C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento where nurses and other health care workers treating coronavirus patients had to go home, lessening the number of workers to help treat the potential health crisis.
3. Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, however, has cleared an entire floor of its downtown hospital as a precaution if coronavirus patients need to be treated in the East Bay, NBC Bay Area reports.
4. U.C. Berkeley received $252 million from an anonymous donor, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. It’s the largest-ever for the university. The proceeds will go toward kickstarting construction of a computing and data science building. $$
5. Following last Saturday’s South Carolina primary, Democratic presidential candidates Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg, and today, Amy Klobuchar, dropped out of the race before tomorrow’s Super Tuesday. It’s the downside of casting your vote-by-mail ballot early in California. So, if you already voted for one of those candidates, you’re out of luck, the Los Angeles Times reports. $$
6. Michael Bloomberg’s money upended the Democratic presidential primaries. Time reports that Bloomberg’s riches affected two recent Oakland school board elections when his political action committee supporting charter schools flooded the Oakland races with money.
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