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Santa Clara County lifted several of its COVID-19 restrictions Friday. The county relaxed restrictions around outdoor gatherings and youth recreation activities amid a drop in COVID-19 cases.

Additionally, a new vaccination site is opening in East San Jose at the Valley Health Center East Valley, also known as the East Valley Clinic.

The new site is aimed to lessen disparities in vaccination availability to communities of color, according to Dr. Gerardo Solorio-Cortes, a primary care physician at Valley Health Center in Gilroy.

Maritza Maldonado has witnessed firsthand the devastation the coronavirus has wrought on the community where she grew up in East San Jose: layoffs, hunger, illness and an alarming number of funerals.

“Especially right after the holidays, we were hearing of people dying, several people a week,” said Maldonado, 60, who runs a local nonprofit that offers health care, legal aid and other services. “These are people that we know. Our neighbors, the people we go to church with.”

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‘With You, Everything Was Better’: Letters from ‘Uncuffed’ Podcast

Cases of COVID-19 in long-term-care facilities have dropped dramatically since vaccines were introduced.

If you have questions about the coronavirus vaccine, KQED has answers.

Obesity now qualifies patients for a COVID-19 vaccine in some states. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with writer Emma Specter on why people should get the vaccine, though BMI is a faulty indicator of health.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

All this week, we are remembering some of the more than 500,000 people in the U.S. who've died of COVID-19 through the music that gave their lives meaning. We're calling our tribute Songs of Remembrance. Deb Kalish wanted to remember her partner, Paul Kleinheider of Chatham, N.J. He was hospitalized early in the pandemic, and once the hospital figured out how patients could connect to the outside world on Zoom, Deb called Paul that way several times a day and played him the songs he loved, especially "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

All this week, we are remembering some of the more than 500,000 people in the U.S. who've died of COVID-19 through the music that gave their lives meaning. We're calling our tribute Songs of Remembrance. Deb Kalish wanted to remember her partner, Paul Kleinheider of Chatham, N.J. He was hospitalized early in the pandemic, and once the hospital figured out how patients could connect to the outside world on Zoom, Deb called Paul that way several times a day and played him the songs he loved, especially "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

All this week, we are remembering some of the more than 500,000 people in the U.S. who've died of COVID-19 through the music that gave their lives meaning. We're calling our tribute Songs of Remembrance. Deb Kalish wanted to remember her partner, Paul Kleinheider of Chatham, N.J. He was hospitalized early in the pandemic, and once the hospital figured out how patients could connect to the outside world on Zoom, Deb called Paul that way several times a day and played him the songs he loved, especially "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

All this week, we are remembering some of the more than 500,000 people in the U.S. who've died of COVID-19 through the music that gave their lives meaning. We're calling our tribute Songs of Remembrance. Deb Kalish wanted to remember her partner, Paul Kleinheider of Chatham, N.J. He was hospitalized early in the pandemic, and once the hospital figured out how patients could connect to the outside world on Zoom, Deb called Paul that way several times a day and played him the songs he loved, especially "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

All this week, we are remembering some of the more than 500,000 people in the U.S. who've died of COVID-19 through the music that gave their lives meaning. We're calling our tribute Songs of Remembrance. Deb Kalish wanted to remember her partner, Paul Kleinheider of Chatham, N.J. He was hospitalized early in the pandemic, and once the hospital figured out how patients could connect to the outside world on Zoom, Deb called Paul that way several times a day and played him the songs he loved, especially "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

All this week, we are remembering some of the more than 500,000 people in the U.S. who've died of COVID-19 through the music that gave their lives meaning. We're calling our tribute Songs of Remembrance. Deb Kalish wanted to remember her partner, Paul Kleinheider of Chatham, N.J. He was hospitalized early in the pandemic, and once the hospital figured out how patients could connect to the outside world on Zoom, Deb called Paul that way several times a day and played him the songs he loved, especially "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

All this week, we are remembering some of the more than 500,000 people in the U.S. who've died of COVID-19 through the music that gave their lives meaning. We're calling our tribute Songs of Remembrance. Deb Kalish wanted to remember her partner, Paul Kleinheider of Chatham, N.J. He was hospitalized early in the pandemic, and once the hospital figured out how patients could connect to the outside world on Zoom, Deb called Paul that way several times a day and played him the songs he loved, especially "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

All this week, we are remembering some of the more than 500,000 people in the U.S. who've died of COVID-19 through the music that gave their lives meaning. We're calling our tribute Songs of Remembrance. Deb Kalish wanted to remember her partner, Paul Kleinheider of Chatham, N.J. He was hospitalized early in the pandemic, and once the hospital figured out how patients could connect to the outside world on Zoom, Deb called Paul that way several times a day and played him the songs he loved, especially "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

All this week, we are remembering some of the more than 500,000 people in the U.S. who've died of COVID-19 through the music that gave their lives meaning. We're calling our tribute Songs of Remembrance. Deb Kalish wanted to remember her partner, Paul Kleinheider of Chatham, N.J. He was hospitalized early in the pandemic, and once the hospital figured out how patients could connect to the outside world on Zoom, Deb called Paul that way several times a day and played him the songs he loved, especially "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel.

Citing an increase in vandalism within the city’s business districts, Portland Commissioner Dan Ryan and Mayor Ted Wheeler have teamed up on a rule that would clear the path for businesses in commercial areas to install security gates and extra lighting.

Currently, businesses in Design Overlay Zones — high-density areas that include many of the city’s commercial districts — looking to install these security measures need to go through a lengthy design review as part of the permitting process.

Somewhere near his fifty-sixth straight hour of chasing flames, CalFire Captain Matt Newberry and his crew were hitting a wall. They’d been dispatched to the wildfire days earlier in the middle of the night. By the next morning, the fire had already ripped across 11,000 acres of Napa County, tearing even through the night the way fires do now.

Despite everything they’d done, hundreds of homes were in smolders.

Writer and director Florian Zeller was very close to his grandmother. “She was like my mother in a way,” he says. “She was very important in my life.”

But when Zeller was 15, his grandmother started to experience dementia. It was “a painful process … to suddenly be impotent,” he says. “You know, you can love someone and you discover that love is not enough.”

An explosion ripped through the hull of an Israeli-owned cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman, reportedly leaving holes in each side of the vessel. Officials said the crew and vessel are safe, but there was no immediate explanation for the blast in a waterway that has a history of attacks on shipping blamed on Iran.

It’s been a weird year for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. First, they stunned Great Britain by “stepping back” as senior members of the Royal Family.