building a better bay area moving forward solutions, this is abc 7 news. and get answers for you in real time. the new formulation covid-19 booster shots are available now, but there are questions about who should get one and who should wait abc 7 news special correspondent dr. alok. patel will be here to share his recommendations and answer your questions. also, our week-long heatwave has put a strain on california's power grid in a new book author catherine blunt explores the rise and fall of pg&e the missed opportunities, the preventable mistakes and the costs were all paying for them. she'll join us in about 20 minutes.

and speaking of the power grid for the 10th straight day. we face another flex alert. this one will last from four until nine pm for more on the heat wave. let's get right to meteorologist. mike nico. mike relief is inside and there. yes, hang in there, especially in our inland east bay neighborhoods where the relief is subtle today, but elsewhere check it out compared to 24 hours ago. we're nearly 20 degrees cooler in san francisco 18 in oakland nine in san jose 14 in santa rosen even 10 degrees cooler in concord, but that puts us at 96. we still have some 100s. look at fairfield 109. same thing in ukiah 101 for brentwood 105 and livermore that's getting close to a record the records 107 and 100 morgan hill, but we have 70s and 80s pretty much everywhere around the bay and even some 60s along the coast something though. she may have noticed today the air quality. i want to touch upon that real quick even though the air district.

will be yellow. it looks a lot worse out there, especially as you look off to the east because that's where the worst air quality is around sacramento and the mosquito fire that smoke is drifting our way and it is creating moderate the unhealthy air quality, but that is still healthy for all of us and here looking at divisible satellite. you can clearly see the smoke lifting to the north and moving out of our neighborhoods. now. there's a fire to our north and oregon is pumping out a whole lot of smoke also and look at it getting caught in those northwesterly winds some of that could wrap around and move into our neighborhoods as we head through the weekend by and far those we look at the smoke forecast starting this afternoon through tonight. it's going to be the sierra and it's going to be northern california through tomorrow and all the way into sunday that have the worst air quality. so if you're heading that way it is going to be dangerous for everybody back here. we're dealing with our last warm to hot day with close to records and livermore, but i'm not expecting any tomorrow though. look at that cooler. the weekend is in humid with

just a chance of a shower the farther south. you are the more likely that is possible and an actual touch of fall in the forecast next week tonight because of the clouds rolling in it's going to be another warm night, but it won't be night where hopefully your air conditioner had to run like it did the last couple of nights. no record warm lows after four consecutive days now tomorrow. i don't expect a flex alert. it's gonna be nice here. look at this mid-upper 80s in the south bay as you head up the peninsula we have pretty much upper 70s to mid 80s near 70 along the coast to even the 65 in ocean beach mid-dupper seventies for downtown at south san francisco. now, we'll have 70s and 80s mid upper 70s to low 80s in the north bay mid-70s to mid 80s and the east bay and as you head inland, look at this, the hundreds are gone. even the 90s are gone we go from 100s down into the mid and upper 80s in our inland east bay neighborhoods. now, we have the smoke out there. we've got that'll dim the sunshine a little bit. we've also got the cloud cover increasing for hurricane k and

the rain and this is why i don't expect this to have any more flex alerts after today because that rain is going to temper the temperatures down in the southern half of the state. the rain just doesn't quite make it here at least. not in any organized fashion. there is a chance of a rogue shower, maybe even a thunderstorm especially saturday afternoon through sunday morning, but the big story will be just how much cooler it's going to be this weekend, even though you'll feel a little bit of that humidity and then next week kristen. look at those temperatures barely in the low 80s inland most of us in the 60s and 70s for several days. so we're going to get payback in a nice way for what we've dealt with this whole week. all right. can't wait. thank you very much mike. you can keep track of the temperatures where you live anytime in the weather on demand section of the avc7 bay area streaming tv app download it for roku apple tv, amazon fire and google tv. all right shifting gears. the new bi-valent covid booster is out. and for the first time they'll be widely available this weekend

with counties and pharmacies holding clinics or taking appointments, but there are lots of questions about the process and the reformulated shot. so joining us live now to answer your questions is abc 7 news special correspondent, dr. alok patel. hello, dr. patel. hey kristen, see i was about to say hello dr. z. but hey kristen, it's good to be here with you. yeah. no, i'm not the dog. you are see the guy in the white coat. the doctor. okay? i'm sorry, i usually like to dress dapper for our show, but i have to run to the hospital after this and switch out of my clark kent costume. always look dapper no matter what you're wearing. just don't try the garbage bag thing but viewers if you're playing along, you know, dr. patel is going to start us off with a round of that good two truths and a lie. we are talking about bivalent booster eligibility edition. so simply put based on the current recommendations. tell me which one of these three hypothetical individuals is not recommended to get the new booster shot.

is it a 10 year old who has asthma got a code booster in june or is it be a 65 year old who got their last booster in february got covid in may or is it see a 35 year old who completed the vaccine primary series in 2021, but is not yet gotten a booster. take a look. tell me which one of these three individuals is not recommended according to the guidelines to go out and get the new bi-valent shot. wait. okay. keep that up there. so one of these a b or c is not supposed to get the new bi-valent shot. is that what you're saying? correct? one of these three not eligible. okay, put your thinking caps on viewers on facebook live a b or c. this is a little tricky dr. patel getting a little challenging here on a friday. i'm going to say a because i think that they are not eligible because she well ten years old. i think it's 12 and up for now for the new booster. so i'm going to stick with that. although we have some folks saying see although tessa agrees

with me a so, let's stick with that. is not right. i mean sorry. yeah a is correct. so the brand that i am everybody's saying a so, thank you and there you go. it's advisor is only improved for ages 12 not but if we can go back to b and c. there's some important points there that people are asking about so regarding b lot of questions coming out kristen from people saying hey, i recently had covid do i need to get this bible in shot? it is recommended that even people who had covid still go out and get the shopping because we don't know how long natural immunity is gonna last. we know it exists. we don't know how durable it is. but what the cdc recommendations came out and said is that you can wait up to three months after recovering from covid-19 to get the bible and shot which is why i wrote may for be and regarding see the only relic recommendation is that you've gotten your primary series. this is a booster shot. this is not a replacement for the first two shots of you got an mrna vaccine or the single shot if you got jay and jay got it. all right good to know that so i want to ask you though.

it doesn't matter which maker you get pfizer or moderna for the booster based on what you got before. you know, i haven't seen any formal recommendations saying that you should seek to one of the other you're allowed to swap like you were for the previous booster shots, but kristen one thing to take into account is the difference in the actual concentration of the of the product in moderna versus pfizer. so if you previously have gotten madonna and you had a side effect or an adverse reaction from it, let's say you had a fever you feel kind of crummy for a couple days that may happen if you get another pfizer shot versus getting a pfizer one so long story short child health professional if you have any specific concerns about previous administrations, and that's the best way to go. but as of right now there is no specific recommendation between modern art advisor if you need to get one get whichever one is available. yeah, and there's no evidence right now that if you mix your better more effective. that's kind of the big thing right now as we don't have any evidence for this bivalent shot about what the difference really is if you mix or match human trials are ongoing right now. that's why it's really important

that people have pretty much do the mixing mice do better. so what the maestra all the maestro really showed is that there was an immune of response. it wasn't really looking for an end-stage metric that we can then move over to humans. we were just looking to say like hey, does this generate antibodies then the other trials that you and i spoke about last week so that bivalent trial that was ba1 and the ancestral strain of stars code to that was only for pfizer and that was a safety trial and the all the other data we have right now is based on the 600 million vaccines that have been given out with only the ancestral strain that's looking for safety as well and the previous studies looking at hybrid immunization meaning mixing and matching different manufacturers have been favorable. so a lot of wording out there, but if people have specific questions, that is why it's so important just to check in with someone and say hey i may need to mix and match because of the availability at the pharmacy in my area. do you recommend that? okay, how do you know if you're getting the new formulation is the old one still being given out?

i've heard anecdotally from people out there saying that they have called pharmacies and it had to figure out whether they were going to get the new formulation now according to vaccines.gov and all the research that i've independently done as of now. the new booster should only be this biovalent booster. the old booster should not be available, but i would recommend anyone out there go online, either you're getting one from cvs walgreens by doctor's office or if you're going to vaccines.gov. you're typing in your zip, but looking around and make sure you're getting the new biovalent booster if you have any doubts call up the pharmacy and just ask and just make sure you're getting that line. that is what they're supposed to be giving out now. okay, i went over my turn, california, you know, my turn ca.gov and it says they're making updates and booster appointments for people 12 and up will not be available during this update. so i'm thinking gosh. okay, how long is it update? and where should people go in the meantime? i would say, you know, i kind of name dropped vaccines.gov. i would go to vaccines.gov if you are just completely unsure

where to go in your area. i just went on right now. there's a kind of see what it looked like and i saw a appointments available at some local pharmacies near me. you can always chat with. unity health center, you can chat with your doctor as well. but that is a kind of a reliable place to go to but like i said call around see what's available. we may have that bottleneck shortage for you know, depending on demand over the next couple weeks, but it looks like we should have availability widespread. got it. all right, dr. patel don't go away because we want to talk more with you when we come back in the meantime if you want to join us on facebook live, dr. patel will be questions be right back.

we are back with abc 7 news special correspondent dr. alok patel. we were answering your questions during the break on facebook live. i'm going to ask one more

question here before we jump into another round of two truths, which is this week a lot of health leaders are saying hey, we should start thinking of the covid booster as something we'll get annually like the flu shot talk to us about that. i know that thought is not, you know pleasing to a lot of people but talk about how this will be done. kristen it's a great question. and essentially it is a frame to get people prepared for the fact that we may have an annual covid-19 shot similar to a the flu shot. now the white house put out a statement essentially saying this is gonna happen every year, but we don't have any evidence to suggest that because if we look at what happens with influenza, there is a predictability predictability to influenzo. we know it's seasonal. we know generally what to expect with regards to our healthcare system and the level of disease every winter and also we have decades of experience now and reformulating that vaccine to match what strain scientists predict is going to be affecting us that winter. these are unanswered questions. yeah regarding covid-19, but i think it's fair to at least say that we might be able to we

might need to tweak this this booster next year depending on a circulating variance. i mean people should be prepared for right but it seems like we're not that great at predicting yet right now. it's more like reaction right to what's out there getting that's why it's still a pandemic and it's not yet. endemic is the unpredictability. all right, dr. patel. let's do another round of two truths and a lie to learn more about the latest medical news and folks if you're playing on facebook live, you can me answer the question. you know, i'm game this one's gonna be a little bit more of a potpourri, but all important which one of these is not true. is it a according to new research forehead thermometers may not be accurate for darker skin people or is it b the us just documented. it's one millionth organ transplant or is it c the american heart association expected to recommend insect consumption as a healthy option for food, obviously, which one of these is not true. wow, this is so hard so viewers. i hope you are weighing in here. they all sound potentially true

dr. patel. so that is the part. that is tricky you made them all so believable. i'm gonna say so they're also interesting and you can use some psychology to get at the core right now. yeah, i'm gonna say the insect consumption thing is a healthy option. i mean people around the world do it and i think it's something that makes sense protein sure. why not and with regard to forehead measuring for a darker of skin people. i know that with ai and also just like reading, you know people's faces. i know there's often this bias in the programming and so i'm gonna say that could be true too. so, you know what, i'm gonna say b is the lie because i want to say maybe we're past the 1 million organ transplant. so i'm going to go with b and it seems like a lot of people i see a wave of bees right now. carrie brenda lavon. okay good enough be b is actually true and be that news just broke today that is fresh off the press. we just had our one million

oregon transplants since 1954, oregon transplantation is saved thousands and thousands of lives and you know c is not correct. i'm not directly heard this from the aha but i am personally a big advocate for insect consumption as he healthier greener way to get protein and this is actually based off research of scientists using mealworms and trying to create a seasoning to actually get americans to find insects palatable because you're right a lot of the world does eat insects and a is also true and the reason this is so important is there's a lot of dark skin people out there like myself and this is a study from emery finding that those forehead thermometers. we all use can actually miss a certain percentage of fevers and people who have darker skin so in short if you're worried about a favor and yourself or your child and you have darker skin take a couple measurements whether that is an oral measurement a -- one and young children and a forehead one. i did the same. all right, this was a great round and even though a lot of us missed that one. i will say see should be the case.

so well pattern i will be an advocate. everyone out there, please consider being an organ donor. i will advocate i see livesave regularly in the hospital. yeah for sure speaking of livesafe. let's talk about the flu shot because you know, it seems like last couple of years there were not as many flu cases just because we just worn out there. we're not out there mingling and giving it to each other. what can we expect this year and should people get the shot? and when should they get it? one thing i'll add is yeah, we didn't see a lot of flu part of it is because we weren't mingling, but kristen we will never downplay the power of hand washing and staying home if you're sick and have symptoms and avoiding others also obviously masks prevent the spread of respiratory viruses, but kristen here's what's concerning scientists. look at the southern hemisphere to look to see what's happening during their flu season, which is during our summer to predict what may happen for our winter and there is there are three things that are concerning number one. australia is having a particularly bad influenza season with some experts in australia saying that it's the worst one they've had in five years we have currently right

now surpass where they were in 2019. second bad thing is we don't have a lot of immunity from previous flu seasons like we normally do because the last two seasons as you mentioned or lighter number three, i have a feeling that people are going to be gathering left and right this holiday season, so it is very important that people out there get their influenza shot. it won't necessarily prevent you from getting the flu, but it will prevent you from getting severely ill winding. icu or worse dr. alok patel. thank you so much. i was such great information and thank you for really challenging us to think today. you always break through as a superstar kristen. happy friday. and it's impact on america as a whole stay with us getting answers i'm jonathan lawson here to tell you about life insurance through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps.

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pg&e and its power grid. the utility was once a legacy company with gilded age roots. but today it's reputation is tarnished as the utility has been blamed for some of the deadliest wildfires in california history bay area author is exploring the rise and fall of pg&e in a new book called california burning. it looks at what pg&e's downfall means for america's power grid joining us live now is author and wall street journal reporter catherine blunt catherine. thanks for being here. thank you for having me. so in california's here the name pg&e these days the associations are not good generally but in your book you explain it was not always this way. in fact pretty far from it, right? it's true. i mean, this is a company with a very storied history as you mentioned. it has root stating back to the gold rush, you know by virtue of the acquisition of a lot of small power companies that were cropping up to serve northern california at the turn of the 20th century pugini grew to become the northern california

monopoly. we know today it did a lot to create jobs electrified different parts of the state promote economic prosperity and it was you know a good operator for much of the 20th century until things really sort of started to break down. so when did things start to go south? it's it's hard to put a fine point on it, but things really started to change in the 1990s with a push to deregulate california's electricity sector reintroducing competition among power generators and the upshot one of the critical upshots of all this for pg&e was that it had to seek bankruptcy protection after the intuing energy crisis of 2000 and 2001 and it emerged, you know, very intent on becoming a strong financial performer delivering to wall street, but in focusing on that one of the consequences with that certain inspections and maintenance weren't getting done in the way that they should have been. in fact, that was one thing pointed to as having led to the campfire. that was just so devastating.

i know in your research you talk to a lot of the survivors of the fire. what was your takeaway? yeah, this is um it the campfire is a good lens through which to give you a lot of the different risks that the company is contending with it. it started when a hook on a transmission tower about the width of a fist broken half and it dropped a live wire spark settled and the brush below the tower and within hours the fire was completely out of control the hook that broke was 100 years old. it was installed around 1920 and it hung there ever since wearing down little by little with every wind storm. so it really underscores the fact that a lot of our infrastructure not only in california, but across the country is very old certainly underscores the need for inspections that can monitor for this sort of deterioration because the way he had been inspecting his power lines inspectors hadn't detected this particular problem. another thing too, which is a big element of this story is that climate change is becoming

a real threat to our infrastructure in this case, california has been so consumed by drought there are millions of trees throughout, northern, california. now which makes the consequence of a single spark so much higher the spire truly spread with with devastating speed and in part because of the health of the forests before i asked you about. what is the solution what's being done? i'm just curious, you know as you were talking about the lack of investment and maintenance and all that and speaking to the desire to please the investors shareholders. where was the government in all this that is is it just pg genius greed or where there's shortcomings on the part of our leaders. sure, so there's the body tapped with overseeing utilities in california as the california public utilities commission in recent years. it's certainly tried to do more to have better oversight of the companies. it's tasked with monitoring but as some of this was unraveling within pg&e the the agency the

safety division in particular was understaffed and underfunded and simply didn't have the bandwidth to have a you know, a really good granular view as to what exactly was going on inter with a company's spending and what it was doing in terms of maintenance of some of these, you know key pieces of infrastructure and you know things have been changing since then, but this is also been part of the problem as well. well catherine as you mentioned with climate change, the stakes are just that much higher with every disaster. so what is happening now have investments now been made are they doing things differently. i know they leadership, right? absolutely. so if there's one good part of the story which as we know is is sad and so many respects company has has never been more aware of the risks throughout the system and it's never been working harder to address them and they've been you know, making a lot of strides using certain technology and line settings that have reduced the risk of ignition the long-term plan under new leadership is to bury 10,000 miles of power lines, which would do a lot to reduce

fire risk throughout the system because of the wire is underground. it can't ignite a fire but there's a there's some practical challenges associated with this namely costs. they estimated. it'll cost 20 billion dollars. so cost management is going to be key in executing this plan as well. as you know, dressing certain challenges related to engineering in redesigning the overhead system in this way a labor and so it remains to be seen if they can fully execute on this plan, but it is a bold new strategy. all right catherine blunt the author of the new book, california. a burning. thank you so much for coming on the show and you very much. we'll be right back.

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answers. we'll be here every weekday at 3:00 on air in our live stream answering your questions world news tonight with david muir is coming up next. have a great day. tonight, history made in london. king charles iii addresses the london and the world for the first time at king. with his nation marking 10 days of mourning, king charles embracing his new role, consoling millions saddened over the death of the only monarch most have ever known, vowing to honor and continue her life of service. the remarkable scene outside buckingham palace today. king charles greeting hundreds of mourners paying their respects. some singing "god save the queen." and then the moment they began singing "god save the king." ♪ god save the king ♪ >> charles appearing emotional amid the support and while r reading