California’s public-sector workforce and private technology companies should intersect somewhat as time nears to relax his March 19 stay-at-home order, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday during his daily press conference on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Loosening that order will of course depend on residents staying home and practicing physical distancing to flatten and lower the numbers of those ill from the virus. But the state will need an infrastructure in place when that happens to help officials track the illness’s spread, the governor said. Among the takeaways:
• California will need the technology in place to help it determine who has or has had the virus — but fortunately, Newsom said, contact tracing efforts for tuberculosis, measles and Ebola predate “this current crisis” and offer a bit of a blueprint. More recently, the state tracked “tens of thousands” of airline passengers from mainland China to keep the state’s health system apprised of their movements and health.
“So, we have an infrastructure, a foundation that’s already in place and now we’re just amplifying that and we’re building on that and I’m very pleased that’s already underway,” Newsom said.
• Officials have an initiative called Check In, Newsom said, which is helping them do contact tracing, and the state is currently vetting other apps and technologies to determine which might be the best additions to the technology stable.
“I’ll say this about California — I love our state. It’s so abundant when it comes to technology,” the governor said, calling all this abundance “the only challenge” in winnowing down potentially viable choices.
• California will also need a “Check In workforce” to scale its contact tracing efforts, Newsom said. The state is working with AmeriCorps and Cal Volunteers to identify those volunteers and “looking to reprioritize existing state staff that are willing to commit to tracing efforts,” working with Julie Su, secretary for the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency. These employees will, the governor said, help document “tens, hundreds of thousands of points of contact in terms of our tracing capacity.”
• The state continues its work to bridge the digital divide that is keeping students without Internet access from so-called “distance learning.” In remarks Monday, Newsom said the state will spend more than $313,000 — derived from $42 million in federal and state General Fund monies — to support the iFoster nonprofit. The state will buy 2,000 laptop computers and 500 cellphones, and fund “short-term staffing assistance” to process applications for these devices from foster youth and their families.
Newsom will also direct the California Government Operations Agency to use the State Surplus Property Program to find laptops for foster youth in higher education.
