Omicron Surge Forecast To Peak In California With Nearly 30,000 Hospitalizations This Month

A California state lawmaker said he wants ensure that all school students in Los Angeles and throughout the state are vaccinated against Covid-19, and do to that, he announced a proposal today to eliminate personal belief exemptions and expand upon a state vaccine mandate.

Los Angeles reported 102 Covid-related deaths today, the highest total since last March. That’s still well below the 290 deaths recorded last January, but the trend line is not good.

here.The Annie Awards have been handed out since 1972, initially to give lifetime-achievement honors and then, beginning in 1992, to honor the best animated films of the year. In the 20 years since the Academy Awards created a category for animated features, more than 93% of the Oscar nominees in the category have first been nominated for Annie Awards in either the Best Feature or Best Indie Feature category.

The Annie Awards will be virtual for a second consecutive year. The board of ASIFA-Hollywood said today that the live ceremony for its 49th annual trophy show has been canceled and replaced by the livestreamed virtual format.

Many restrictions in Scotland will be scrapped from Monday as cases from the Omicron surge fall.

Hollywood’s Covid safety protocols, which had been set to expire over the weekend, are being extended on a day-to-day basis as labor and management continue to work out details for a formal extension – the first since the highly infectious Omicron variant has led to a worldwide surge in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. A formal extension is expected to include changes to the protocols that reflect this new reality and the Center for Disease Control’s evolving guidelines.

In what may be the first sign of the beginning of the end of the Omicron surge in Los Angeles, the 7-day average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus has fallen dramatically in the past week. Test positivity is considered a better measure of the rate of spread than raw case counts because it is a percentage that is averaged over a week’s time.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has rejected parole for Sirhan Sirhan, concluding that the man convicted of assassinating Robert Kennedy “still lacks the insight that would prevent him from making the kind of dangerous and destructive decisions he made in the past.”

“We’ll get through this last surge,” promised California Governor Gavin Newsom today at a Southern California vaccination site.

Broadway’s traditional post-holiday January doldrums teamed up with a slate of show closings and a national skyrocketing surge in Omicron cases to send box office tumbling by nearly a third last week. Combined grosses of $18 million for 27 Broadway productions were down 31% from the previous week’s $26 million.

With infections still surging, Los Angeles County’s cumulative number of Covid cases throughout the pandemic surpassed the 2 million mark today, with 43,582 new cases confirmed. Those new cases lifted the county’s cumulative case total to 2,010,964 since the pandemic began. Daily cases in the county set an all-time high on Sunday at 45,584.

“I think for the next two weeks, we’re going to continue to see our case rates rise,” said Los Angeles Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer on Thursday. That statement was made more ominous by the fact that, on that very day, the county recorded a record number of new daily cases for the pandemic. At 37,000, the new tally was 10,000 cases higher than the previous record. It’s hard to imagine where two more weeks of increases will lead.

California Governor Gavin Newsom today announced he has activated the California National Guard to support local communities with additional testing facilities and capacity amid the surge in Covid cases driven by the Omicron variant.

France is on the verge of relaxing travel rules for UK passengers brought in last month.

Griffin Dunne, who directed a 2017 film documentary about his aunt, literary giant Joan Didion, has issued a statement on her passing.

Sara Bareilles shared an emotional message on Instagram after revealing her Broadway musical “Waitress” would be closing ahead of schedule.

The COVID-19 variant Omicron is on the verge of making a virtual mess of what was supposed to be a return to a vibrant, in-person awards season.And in a season designed to crown a lot of winners, it could turn almost everybody into losers – except, maybe, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, whose humiliation won’t be as public or as humiliating as it was supposed to be.

“Fifty percent of all of the sequenced genomes identify themselves as Omicron,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday. He was speaking of the positive Covid tests and wastewater in the state that have been examined for new cases of the variant. Newsom then hinted that numbers to be released today would be even higher.