COVID-19

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY—Salvador Orozco’s days have been different since Santa Cruz County officials ordered residents to stay home and forced most businesses to shutter their doors to slow the spread of Covid-19. The owner of Foreverfly Skate and Apparel in downtown Watsonville has played the...

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY—Though some rural counties are allowing restaurants to open for dine-in service, Santa Cruz County officials are still several days away from giving their restaurateurs the green light. That’s according to county spokesman Jason Hoppin, who on Tuesday said testing and contact tracing...

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY—Deep cleaning is now routine at Santa Cruz METRO to not only keep their fleet on the road, but to assure riders that busses are squeaky clean. Every day since early March, before the first person in Santa Cruz County was diagnosed with...

APTOS—A month before summer classes begin on June 15, Cabrillo College is seeing a significant increase in enrollment for that semester, even as college officials gird themselves for a recession and for budget cuts caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In addition, Cabrillo announced Friday that...

WATSONVILLE—The City of Watsonville on Tuesday will ask the City Council to allow its moratorium on evictions to expire at the end of the month, and instead defer to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide executive order and protections put in place by California’s Judicial Council. The...

SANTA CRUZ—The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors at Friday’s emergency meeting voted unanimously to approve a Stage 2 variance application under the state’s so-called Resilience Roadmap which would allow local restaurants and barbershops/hair salons to begin expanded services. If approved by the state, the...

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY—Gov. Gavin Newsom on May 27 released his revision of the California budget, and through it proposed to eliminate funding for Community Based Adult Services (CBAS) no sooner than July 1. CBAS programs aim to provide seniors alternatives to nursing facilities and other...

WATSONVILLE—To say Watsonville City Councilman Francisco “Paco” Estrada had mixed feelings about the emergence of the four Covid-19 ‘clusters’ in Watsonville would be an understatement. The spike in cases was traced back to four separate family gatherings during Mother’s Day weekend, including one in which...

WATSONVILLE—Many students unable to return to class when school starts on Aug. 14 due to Covid-19 restrictions will attend a virtual academy, an all-online option created by Pajaro Valley Unified School District as it plans for the coming academic year. The PVUSD Board of Trustees...

WATSONVILLE—The Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees on Wednesday unanimously voted to delay a decision on how to resume classes in August, to give district officials time to investigate all of their options. Still undetermined is which risk level the district will use...