State with one of the strictest lockdowns in the country has the most COVID cases

Florida surpassed 1.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 when approximately 15,000 new cases were identified Tuesday, according to the state Department of Health.

“There is some hope,” said California’s Director of Health and Human Services, Dr. Mark Ghaly during his Tuesday Covid-19 briefing. “There is some reduction in numbers.”

Acknowledging that California has repeatedly missed its stated Covid-19 vaccination targets, Governor Gavin Newsom made a bold commitment on Friday.

Amid the national tumult on Wednesday, a newly-issued California Travel Advisory got little attention.

As of late Saturday, the nation has surpassed 350,000 deaths from coronavirus. At least 350,214 deaths have been reported since the start of the pandemic, Johns Hopkins University said.

UPDATED with latest: Friday was by far the deadliest day of the pandemic in California. On Wednesday, California saw a frightening new high of 432 Covid-related deaths. Thursday’s number dipped slightly to 428. On Friday, the number of lives recorded lost to the virus rocketed to 585. That’s a 37% rise in one day.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor“The Ellen DeGeneres Show” will stay dark next week amid the growing alarm about rising COVID-19 infection rates in Los Angeles County and the rest of California.The syndicated daytime talk show has been airing reruns since Dec. 10 when DeGeneres announced that she had contracted the coronavirus.

Samuel Little, the country's most prolific serial killer who confessed to more than 90 slayings, has died. He was 80.

A Delaware Chancery Court Wednesday rejected Shari Redstone’s motion to dismiss a shareholder lawsuit claiming she breached her fiduciary duty by pushing allies to ram through the Viacom-CBS merger at stockholder expense in a quest to attain the status of “media magnate” like her father, the late Sumner Redstone.

the stay-at-home order for Southern California will remain in effect indefinitely, SAG-AFTRA told members Tuesday night that “most” film and TV productions will stay on hiatus through at least the middle of January.Across the Los Angeles area, hospitals are at zero capacity with ICUs full, with some reporting that they’ve had to turn gift shops into makeshift rooms and even turn patients away.

Ellise Shafer administratorIn a message to members on Tuesday, SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris and national executive director David White said that many productions will remain on hiatus for the next few weeks as Los Angeles County experiences a continued surge in COVID-19 cases.“We are writing to let you know that we are closely monitoring the recent surge in COVID-19 infections along with the reported lack of intensive care unit (ICU) beds throughout the state of California and

the stay-at-home order for Southern California will remain in effect indefinitely, SAG-AFTRA told members Tuesday night that “most” film and TV productions will stay on hiatus through at least the middle of January.Across the Los Angeles area, hospitals are at zero capacity with ICUs full, with some reporting that they’ve had to turn gift shops into makeshift rooms and even turn patients away.

California became the first state to record 2 million confirmed coronavirus cases, reaching the milestone on Christmas Eve as nearly the entire state was under a strict stay-at-home order and hospitals were flooded with the largest crush of cases since the pandemic began. A tally by Johns Hopkins University showed the nation's most populous state has recorded 2,010,157 infections since January.

A grim milestone for California as the state became the first in the country Thursday to surpass 2 million cases of the coronavirus, just six weeks after reaching 1 million cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University and California Governor Newsom.

“We are experiencing a modest decline in the rate of growth over the past few days,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom as he addressed the state of the state’s Covid-19 numbers on Wednesday. He then called the 39,069 new cases reported “a modest indication of some possible sign of some good news.” The governor also announced that the 7-day test positivity rate had “declined slightly” from 13.3% to 12.6%

As the number of Covid-19 hospitalizations continued its record ascent in Los Angeles County on Tuesday, 30% of the respondents to a recent survey indicated they had visited a friend, neighbor or relative or had visitors at their residence. The survey was conducted by the University of Southern California’s Center for Social and Economic Research, which does a weekly representative survey of L.A. County residents about their actions through the pandemic.

Dave McNary Film ReporterNetflix is delaying the start of production of the Chris Evans-Ryan Gosling thriller “The Gray Man” — which had been scheduled for mid-January — amid concerns about the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in California.Netflix had no comment.