Valley News

Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Monday that the San Joaquin Valley will get a major boost to its COVID-19 vaccine allocation. That’s due in part to the region’s food and ag workers, who now are also receiving some priority access to the vaccine. Valley counties will now be receiving thousands …

Early on in the pandemic, the state of California put an emphasis on equity in its pandemic response, requiring specific levels of testing and outreach in disadvantaged census tracts in order for counties to advance through the state’s reopening blueprint. Now, obstacles to vaccine access have introduced the potential for …

Shipments of more than 15,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine promised to the San Joaquin Valley have been delayed this week, thanks to severe weather that has snarled shipping and distribution networks in the central and eastern parts of the country. “All of our doses for last week were held …

More than six percent of Californians have now contracted COVID-19 since the pandemic began, but in one San Joaquin Valley county, the case rate is almost twice as high. According to county and state data, 18,110 people in Kings County have contracted COVID-19 since March , a total that’s equivalent …

When Black Americans fled the oppression of Jim Crow as part of the Great Migration, some came to the Central Valley to establish settlements like Fairmead and Allensworth. Among the largest of those communities was Cookseyville. It was founded by Sid and Olevia Cooksey, who purchased several acres of farmland …

Next week marks the one year anniversary of the fire in Porterville that destroyed the city’s public library and took the lives of firefighter Patrick Jones and Fire Captain Raymond Figueroa. It was a tragedy that shook the community and left its residents without the many resources a library provides. …

When Governor Gavin Newsom stopped in Fresno earlier this week, he was widely anticipated to announce that Fresno would be the site of the state’s newest mass COVID-19 vaccination clinic. The clinic, which he had alluded to earlier in the week, is expected to be run in partnership between the …

During a visit to Fresno on Wednesday, Governor Gavin Newsom said vaccinating the Central Valley against COVID-19 is a “top priority.” Though Newsom was widely expected to announce a new federal government-partnered mass vaccination clinic in the city during his stop at the Fresno Fairgrounds, he instead shared that the …

When wildfires burn in our national parks, we naturally worry about the forest. But what about the photographs, maps and documents that tell the stories of our parks? How do we keep those important archives safe? FM89’s Alice Daniel spoke with Emily Lin, librarian and head of digital curation at …

Free speech, as enshrined in the First Amendment, is central to what many consider to be the American experience. But the debate over the limits of free speech has been ignited by how the use of social media contributed to the January 6 riot and violent attack on the U.S. …

So far, San Joaquin Valley residents have received nearly 200,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine —a sum that may sound high, but falls far short of the average per capita rate reported elsewhere in California. Plus, for the second week in a row, a low vaccine supply has kept many …

Since the start of the pandemic, 43,000 Californians have officially died due to COVID-19 . But a new research paper by a team of epidemiologists at the University of California, San Francisco suggests that the true death toll due to the virus is likely much higher , after studying deaths …

Dr. Venu Gopal served as the sole forensic pathologist for the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office in 2020. During that year he performed roughly 350 autopsies and 500 external exams, all while managing the pressure of working through a pandemic. In acknowledgment of his service to the community, Dr. Gopal was …