The Brief

Breaking with national public health policy, California officials are recommending that children 6 months to 2 years old, as well as people who are pregnant and lactating, should get vaccinated against COVID-19, following guidance from reputable medical groups.

In a statement to KQED, the California Department of Public Health said Wednesday that it endorses recent recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for COVID-19, influenza and RSV vaccines.

The guidance, released last month, was in line with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations under the Biden Administration.

“As a part of our efforts, along with our West Coast state partners and other states around the country, to provide a unified science-based approach to protecting the health of our communities, California is carefully considering guidance from various trusted national medical professional and scientifically based organizations,” the CDPH said.

Typically, the CDC sets vaccine recommendations based on the available data, which insurers use to set reimbursement guidelines. But under the direction of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who has espoused virulent anti-vaccine rhetoric for decades — the CDC now only recommends COVID vaccines for “most adults ages 18 years and older.”

That left many in the medical community concerned that confusing and inconsistent messaging would cause vaccine rates to drop, and even make vaccines unaffordable for lower-income families whose insurance providers may no longer cover them.

Dr. Abraar Karan, an infectious disease physician at Stanford University, said the state is making a “wise” choice because data show that vaccines help minimize COVID-19 infections in typically healthier populations like children older than six months and young adults, and reduce the risk of urgent care and emergency room visits for COVID-19 patients “by 33%.”

“That’s pretty significant, and sort of mirrors what you see with flu vaccines as well. Functionally, that is what we are hoping for, for the general population, is to make you get less sick, fewer days of [missed] work [and] less utilization of the health care system,” Karan said.

“COVID spreads in waves. We have multiple waves per year, and they do require a large usage of our health care system. So if we have a safe, effective vaccine to reduce that healthcare usage in that healthier group, that’s important.”

Karan said that because California is following the guidance of leading medical groups, it’s likely insurance companies will cover the shots.

More importantly, he said, those states are adhering to the evidence.

“Whereas what is happening at HHS is … a lot of opinions, particularly from RFK Jr. himself, on unproven therapeutics, on risks that are not borne out by the data. And then he’s sort of just hand-waving and doing whatever he wants,” Karan said.

In June, Kennedy removed all 17 members of an advisory committee that helps the CDC form its vaccine policies to begin to “restore public trust in vaccines.”

Dr. John Swartzberg, professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, said that by following the advice of leading medical groups, California and the other states of the West Coast Alliance are making it easier for families to get their children vaccinated against COVID-19.

“When you look at the data for very young children in terms of hospitalization and death, the rates are pretty comparable to older Americans,” Swartzberg said. “This is a vulnerable population where protection is terribly important. So I think that the California Department of Public Health, in following the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics, is spot on.”

Swartzberg said it is interesting to note that President Donald Trump even pushed back on Kennedy’s anti-vax stance in the last few days. Trump even expressed some skepticism about Florida’s push to phase out all childhood vaccine mandates.

“I think there are people in the administration who recognize that this is a hot button item, and all the Republicans are not really on board with where Kennedy is, so that might translate into the administration not trying to make a political football out of this with California,” he said. “We are very fortunate here in California. We have a department of health that is science-based and really solid.”

Who can get a new COVID vaccine right now?

The updated 2025–26 COVID-19 vaccines are currently available at CVS, Walgreens and Safeway pharmacies in California.

(Pharmacies take their cue from the federal government, not the states, so they’ve always been the first places that COVID-19 vaccines roll out — before shots become more widely available through providers and public health authorities.)

These pharmacy appointments are only available to people who, during the online booking process, say they are either:

• Age 65 and older
• Have a health condition that could make someone at higher risk from COVID-19

But what counts as “high risk”? To find out if you or a family member might qualify, you can consult the CDC’s current list of health conditions that potentially put you at higher risk of severe illness, hospitalization or death from COVID-19, which includes cancer, chronic lung, kidney and liver disease and certain disabilities. However, it also encompasses other factors like mental health conditions — including depression — obesity and being a current or former smoker.

When listing some of these conditions, CVS’s online appointment also suggests “any other conditions or situations that place you at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 (consult your pharmacist or medical provider if you need help).”

• Make a 2025 COVID-19 vaccine appointment at CVS
• Make a 2025 COVID-19 vaccine appointment at Walgreens 
• Make a 2025 COVID-19 vaccine appointment at Safeway

An East Hollywood nursing home that nearly lost its license this year because of repeated state citations for deaths of residents at the facility was cited again last month after another person died.

The California Department of Public Health cited Brier Oak on Sunset after a 92-year-old resident bled to death on Sept. 27. Staff members had continued injecting her with blood thinners over a 40-hour period in violation of clinical guidelines.

It’s an AA citation, the most severe the department issues when violations of care standards are determined to be a substantial factor in someone’s death. The facility faces a $120,000 fine.

These kinds of citations are rare. The department has recently issued, on average, fewer than 20 AA citations yearly across more than 1,200 skilled nursing facilities in California.

Brier Oak has received three AA citations for patient deaths since late 2022.

State regulations require authorities to suspend or revoke the licenses of any facilities that get two AA citations within a period of 24 months.

The state Public Health Department began that process with Brier Oak in May based on resident deaths in 2022 and 2024. But officials dropped that effort later because they say they determined the two patient deaths had occurred 26 months apart — just outside of the two-year window.

The facility’s administrators did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Advocates for nursing home residents say the recent death could have been avoided if the state had taken action.

“There were red flags, and a lot of these red flags existed prior to the death of this poor resident,” said Tony Chicotel, senior staff attorney with  California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

The state said Brier Oak has until Dec. 19 to notify the department whether it intends to appeal the state citation.

What led to the patient deaths?

In the recent death at Brier Oak cited by the state, multiple communication and technical failures by nursing staff led to the patient bleeding out over a period of 40 hours, according to the citation.

The 92-year-old patient was immobile and had been prescribed a blood thinner called heparin to help prevent blood clots from forming. But once a patient is bleeding, those injections make bleeding worse, and potentially fatal.

When nursing staff found bright red blood in the resident’s diaper the day before she died, Brier Oak failed to follow established processes for documenting the bleeding or communicating it to a nurse practitioner or medical doctor, according to the citation.

Nurses told state authorities they delayed informing physicians because they “get mad” when contacted in the middle of the night.

The facility’s staff also failed to fully assess the patient to determine the possible causes of the bleeding and or to properly monitor the issue during crucial periods, according to the citation.

She suffered four internal bleeding episodes over 40 hours and continued to receive blood thinner injections.

The citation says a nurse practitioner at Brier Oak told state licensing authorities later that if she’d been informed about the patient’s ongoing bleeding, she would have stopped the blood thinner and sent her to a hospital.

In 2022, Brier Oak received a AA citation after a 62-year-old woman died from respiratory failure in part because nurses hadn’t been trained to operate her breathing machine.

In 2024, the nursing home got another AA citation. This time, a 63-year-old woman with paraplegia and severe obesity fell from her bed and died while a nursing assistant was changing her. The assistant was alone, even though the woman’s care plan required two staff members.

Who owns Brier Oak?

Brier Oak on Sunset is primarily owned by Genesis Healthcare, a publicly-traded nursing home operator that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July.

Once the largest nursing home operator in the U.S., Genesis was facing billions in debt when it declared bankruptcy, according to court filings. That includes millions in potential damages from lawsuits related to patient care failures.

The company did not respond to LAist’s request for comment on the recent citation at Brier Oak.

The citation should trigger a suspension or revocation of the facility's license, according to state regulations. The latter means it would have to close its doors. The two most recent deaths and citations at the facility occurred within the two-year window.

The California Department of Public Health confirmed it cited Brier Oak on Nov. 26.

The department said the facility submitted a required written response before a Dec. 6 deadline, showing how it will fix the problems and prevent them from happening again..

The department determined Brier Oak was back in compliance during an onsite visit last week, a representative told LAist.

Brier Oak on Sunset currently houses about 150 patients, according to state records.

A bankruptcy judge has stalled the proposed sale of Genesis Healthcare to an affiliate of one of its investors.

Experts say it’s unclear whether the state would revoke the license of an owner who is actively trying to sell and turn over operations to someone else.

It’s been a rough start to ski and snowboard season for California mountain towns. Snowfall is well below average, but Christmas could come with some of the white stuff. Here's where things stand:

Hmmm. Didn’t we just have a record storm?

Yes. That big atmospheric river that hit Southern California last month made it one of the wettest Novembers on records. But since then, it’s been unusually warm and dry, which is not good for mountain towns that depend on snow, and the outdoor enthusiasts that flock to them.

How bad is it?

California’s snowpack is about 20% of normal for this time of the year, according to the state’s snow-tracking website. Southern California isn’t quite as bad off — we’ve gotten about half our normal snowfall so far.

As for the resorts, only about 20% of the terrain at Bear Mountain in Big Bear is open. About 35% of Mammoth Mountain is open.

Can’t they just make snow?

They are, but the unusually warm temperatures have curbed resorts’ ability to make enough snow to open more terrain. “If you're blowing water into 40-degrees, it's going to stay water,” said Justin Kanton, a spokesperson for Big Bear Mountain Resort. “ So as much as people probably would want us to just crank the snow guns all day, every day up here and just get things moving, that's not really possible.”

But there’s a silver lining!

The dry weather has allowed Caltrans to make good progress toward opening Highway 38, said Evan Engle, who chairs the board of the Big Bear Chamber of Commerce. The road typically handles up to 40% of traffic up to the mountain town, Engle said. But it’s been closed since September when it got washed out by Tropical Storm Mario.

Getting it open as soon as possible is key to keeping visitor traffic manageable, and getting supplies to Big Bear.

What’s the snow outlook?

SoCal mountains are likely to see some precipitation around Christmas, said Kyle Wheeler, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. But with temperatures not expected to drop much, it’s uncertain how much of it will be white, Wheeler said.

If you go to Big Bear: 

• If you plan to hit the slopes, get on it early, when the snow is at its best given the warm conditions. 
• No snow? There’s more to do than ski and snowboard. Check this list of winter fun events.  
• Worried about traffic? Consider going up earlier in the week. If you can’t do that, consider taking Highway 18 through Lucerne Valley. It’s a longer route if you’re coming from L.A., but less traveled, and less likely to make you car sick (fewer tight curves). 

Hop onto TikTok and you'll find lots of videos of young people — mostly women — fake baking under the glowing UV lights of a tanning bed. Seattle dermatologist Heather Rogers says this is an alarming trend that comes after years of decline in indoor tanning in the U.S.

She points to a 2025 survey from the American Academy of Dermatology which found 20% of Gen Z respondents prioritize getting a tan over protecting their skin. And 25% say it's worth looking great now even if it means looking worse later.

They feel like "it's better to be tan than it is to worry about skin cancer," Rogers says.

A new study in the journal Science Advances reinforces just why they should worry.

Researchers found that tanning bed users were nearly three times as likely to develop melanoma — the deadliest form of skin cancer — compared to people who'd never tanned indoors. They also had DNA damage that can lead to melanoma across nearly the entire surface of the skin.

"Even in skin cells that look normal, in tanning bed patients, you can find those precursor mutations" that lead to melanoma, says Dr. Pedram Gerami, one of the study's authors and the IDP Foundation professor of skin cancer research at Northwestern University.

Gerami and his collaborators compared the medical records of nearly 3,000 patients who used tanning beds to an age-matched control group of patients who didn't tan indoors. They found that the more people used the tanning beds, the higher their risk of melanoma.

"If they had 10 to 50 tanning bed exposures, their risk was twice as high as the control group," Gerami says. If they had over 200 tanning bed visits, their risk was more than eight times as high.

"If you think about it, getting 200 tanning bed exposures can happen really quickly. If you go once a week for four years, there you are," he says.

The researchers also performed genetic sequencing on normal skin cells from tanning bed users. Most were younger women, which makes sense, because studies have shown that young women in their teens and 20s are the heaviest users of indoor tanning, says study co-author Hunter Shain, an associate professor of dermatology at the UC San Francisco.

Shain says when the researchers compared these skin samples to normal skin cells from people in the general population who were twice the age of the indoor tanners, they were "stunned" by what they found.

"Women in their 30s and 40s had more mutations than people in their 70s and 80s from the general population," says Shain, whose research focuses on the biology of skin cancer. "They somehow were able to cram in two lifetimes' worth of UV damage in 30 years."

Dr. Heather Rogers, who was not involved in the study, notes that tanning beds can emit ultraviolet radiation that is 10 to 15 times stronger than what you'd get from the sun. She says that tanning beds are often marketed as being safer than the sun, but this study shows how wrong those claims are.

Dr. Pedram Gerami says many of the patients he sees at a high-risk melanoma clinic are women who started indoor tanning as teens wanting to look better for events like homecoming and prom.

"Now, as young adults, they're having to deal with frequent skin checks, frequent doctor visits, frequent biopsies, lots of anxiety, and the emotional burden of having been diagnosed with cancer at a young age," Garami says. "So they have a lot of heaviness to deal with."

He says some of these patients chose to donate skin samples to the study in hopes of helping other young people avoid the same fate.

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