Stop destroying human life: give us covid testing now

Recognizing that our State’s inadequate testing capacity to control COVID-19 is a barrier to the opening of California schools and its businesses, leaving our most in-need children and poor citizens at risk, our unemployment rate skyrocketing, and that if California does not find a way to test more soon, the State may see more deaths than New York has today; Noting that California is conducting approximately 125,000 COVID-19 tests daily, which is inadequate to control the virus, the positivity rate is 7.5%, which is far below the needed rate of 3% to ensure the virus is under control, and results are taking weeks, allowing the virus to spread further out of control;[1] Acknowledging that the disproportionate percentage of people of color, and underrepresented ethnic groups, as well as low-income California residents, have lost their employment or become under-employed; Acknowledging also that as the economy worsens due to the COVID crisis, more people are experiencing homelessness, and the risk of homelessness for those in precarious housing situations is rising drastically; Recognizing that since mid-March’s shelter in place, California paid, over only four months, $45.6 billion in unemployment benefits, already twice the total unemployment benefits paid out in 2010, the worst year of the great recession, and also since March, US industrial production suffered its largest setback since 1946; Noting that 30% of Californian families are run by single parents who must work, and a disproportionate amount of women are losing their careers and jobs to stay home to home school; Noting also, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, over 40% of California’s children (~4 million children) live in or near poverty in California.