News you don’t want to miss for April 2:
1. Oakland will receive 91 former FEMA trailers to help house the unsheltered during the coronavirus crisis, the East Bay Times reports. Other cities in Alameda County are expected to also receive trailers.
2. Contra Costa County officials will convert Richmond’s Craneway Pavilion into a medical facility able to hold 250 coronavirus patients, the East Bay Times reports. The conversion could be completed by mid-April.
3. Gov. Gavin Newsom is already planning for “Phase 2” of the state’s response to the coronavirus, the Sacramento Bee reports. Newsom’s call for 50,000 more hospital beds and 10,000 ventilators could be exhausted by mid-May, he said on Wednesday.
4. Eden Health District officials in central Alameda County will purchase 100,000 medical masks to aid front-line medical workers, the East Bay Citizen reports. The district’s board of directors also allocated $250,000 to fund, along with the county, three mobile COVID-19 testing sites.
5. Unemployment claims continue to skyrocket. A record 6.6 million Americans filed claims last week, including 878,727 in California, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The sudden increase in layoffs due to the coronavirus could eventually raise unemployment to 10 percent, analysts believe.
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