Coronavirus updates: More than 1,000 deaths in California; economy in ‘free fall’
California continues to face great uncertainty due to the coronavirus pandemic, as public life remains shut down and a surge of new fatalities this week brought the state’s death toll past 1,000.
At least 1,037 people have died from the virus, and more than 28,888 have been infected in California, according to an updated count by Johns Hopkins University released Friday afternoon.
In the previous 24 hours, 95 people had died, Gov. Gavin Newsom said during his daily news briefing Friday — the highest one-day total of the crisis in the state.
It was the fourth straight day in which the California Department of Public Health confirmed more than 60 additional deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the highly contagious coronavirus, and the official death toll has risen by 298 since Monday.
The state’s public health department generally lags slightly in updating its official infection and death counts. By its tally, deaths swelled from 687 on Monday to 758 by Tuesday’s update, then again to 821 by Wednesday, 890 by midday Thursday and 985 on Friday.
The deadly week was a trend nationwide, though California still reports relatively low death figures compared with other states, given its population of about 40 million. More than 36,700 people have died from the coronavirus in the United States as of Friday, according to data maintained by Johns Hopkins University, with nearly 17,000 of the fatalities coming in New York state. About 153,000 have died worldwide.
Thursday marked four weeks since Newsom issued a mandatory stay-at-home order that told Californians they could only leave home for essential reasons.
Earlier this week, Newsom outlined six criteria the state would have to meet before it could begin easing its stay-home restrictions. The final point on his list was the state having the ability to “toggle” between periods of more relaxed and more restrictive physical distancing guidelines, which may be a necessary-if-uncomfortable measure to keep spread of the virus manageable until better treatment, or a vaccine, is available.
President Donald Trump on Thursday announced federal guidelines for a three-phase plan to reopen the U.S. economy while acknowledging that reopening will be a state-by-state process led by governors. Trump suggested some states could begin relaxing social distancing restrictions as soon as May 1.
That won’t be the case in California, where Newsom suggested during a news briefing Tuesday it might be another two weeks — roughly late April or early May — before the governor could even give a more specific timeline for starting to relax the stay-at-home order.
Newsom has credited Californians’ adherence to physical distancing guidelines with helping “bend” or flatten the pandemic’s growth curve, keeping hospital systems from being overwhelmed, but he has also consistently cautioned that reopening society and the economy too soon could undo that progress. The economic impact, as entire industries have been shut down for weeks, has been devastating, as both California and the U.S. have seen unemployment figures skyrocket.
Latest official unemployment report doesn’t tell whole story
California’s unemployment rate officially shot up to 5.3 percent last month, but state officials acknowledged that the coronavirus pandemic made the true picture far worse.
The state Employment Development Department, releasing the monthly payroll data, said Friday that the official state jobless rate rose to 5.3 percent in March from 3.9 percent the month before.
In the greater Sacramento metropolitan area, EDD said the unemployment rate jumped to 4.7 percent from 3.8 percent a month earlier.
The results reflect surveys taken the week of March 12 — just as parts of the economy were shutting down but about a week before Newsom and various counties issued stay-at-home orders that brought most businesses to a standstill.
The official numbers for March reflect job losses of 99,500, a fraction of the true jobless situation. Newsom said Friday that 3.1 million Californians have filed new unemployment claims since March 12.
Many economic experts believe the state unemployment rate will approach 20 percent sometime in the next month or two.
California employment “is in free fall and no bottom is yet in sight,” said business economist Sung Won Sohn of Loyola Marymount University in an email. Sohn believes the recovery from what he calls “the Great Lockdown” will be slow.
As incomplete as the official numbers are, they still show the abruptness of the economic shock from the COVID-19 shutdowns in a state where job growth had been relentless until now. The increase of 1.4 percentage points in unemployment was the largest one-month leap since modern record keeping began in 1976, the state said.
The loss of 99,500 jobs snapped a string of 120 straight months of job growth in what had been the longest economic expansion on record.
Recession could last years, experts say
Lawmakers and state fiscal experts say California’s economic recession brought on by the coronavirus may last years, in the worst-case scenario.
Legislative Analyst Gabe Petek proposed three scenarios for how California could emerge from the recession.
The first offers an “optimistic” view that economic activity will remain “depressed” until the threat of the coronavirus subsides and stay-at-home orders are lifted. This best-case scenario would see recovery happen late this year or early 2021.
The second scenario shows a more “sluggish” reversal of economic inactivity, Petek said. That would be the case if restrictions remain in place longer due to prolonged worry over the coronavirus, keeping businesses shuttered through a more extended period.
The third, worst-case model suggests the virus dissipates this summer and restrictions are lifted; but then, the virus returns later this year and stay-at-home orders resume for another cycle of the pandemic.
“We don’t know how deep the downturn will be, how long it will last or the shape of the recovery will look like,” Petek said. “The economic outcome depends on evolution of virus itself.”
More than 900,000 Californians filed initial unemployment claims last week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, and more than 2.7 million total have sought benefits over the last four weeks.
Outbreak at supermarket distribution center in Tracy
An employee at a large Northern California supermarket distribution center has died of COVID-19 complications, according to the governor and confirmed by a company spokesperson.
Newsom said Thursday that Safeway’s distribution center in Tracy has had 51 workers test positive for the virus out of about 1,700 employees at its 2.2 million square-foot-center 50 miles south of Sacramento.
“We were saddened to learn that an associate at our Tracy Distribution Center has passed away due to complications related to COVID-19,” a Safeway spokeswoman said in a statement Thursday. “Our hearts are heavy, and our thoughts are with that associate’s family. This is difficult for the entire Safeway team.”
The man’s family identified the man to The Modesto Bee on Thursday as 52-year-old Pedro Zuniga of Turlock. He died Monday.
Newsom disclosed the Safeway center outbreak during his daily news briefing, in which he announced an executive order giving food workers an extra two weeks of supplemental paid sick leave during the coronavirus emergency.
Safeway spokeswoman Wendy Gutshall said the Tracy distribution center’s produce warehouse is short on staff “for a variety of reasons.” She said the company was streamlining operations “to ensure that our stores are still able to be supplied with the necessary order for our customers.”
What is Remdesivir? Antiviral drug gets trial at UCD Medical Center
An antiviral drug being tested at several hospitals around the world, including UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, has showed some promise in an early trial, while health experts continue to express caution about the study’s limitations.
Remdesivir, which was approved to fight the Ebola virus, was central in a trial between Jan. 25 and March 30 to investigate whether the drug has benefits in treating COVID-19.
About two-thirds of patients with severe cases of the coronavirus experienced improvement after taking Remdesivir, according to an April 10 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study findings are based on health outcomes for 53 COVID-19 patients, ages 23 to 82, who were admitted to the hospitals.
Doctors gave each patient 200 milligrams of Remdesivir on their first day of treatment and 100 mg on each of nine successive days. The medication was administered intravenously.
When physicians later followed up with these patients, 17 of 30 patients who had been on ventilators had been removed from them. Thirty-four out of 53 patients showed improvements in oxygen levels. Nearly half of all the patients had been discharged from hospitals.
Seven of the 53 patients died.
“It had a small number of enrolled patients and relatively short follow-up timeline,” explained Stuart Cohen, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Internal Medicine at UC Davis Health. “It didn’t include a randomized control group and did not collect and compare amount of virus present before and after treatment with Remdesivir and other clinical approaches.”
Sacramento court closure extended
Sacramento Superior Court will stay closed through at least May 15, Sacramento Superior Court Presiding Judge Russell Hom announced Thursday. The original closure order had been set to expire Thursday.
Courthouses and courtrooms remain closed to judicial business, while Sacramento and some superior courts throughout California have used video conferencing to hold remote hearings.
Hom said while court services will continue to increase “incrementally,” any increase will be limited to those services deemed essential including in-custody hearings, bail setting, emergency protective orders and restraining orders.
UC Davis summer sessions going remote
The University of California, Davis announced last week that all summer session classes this year will be taught remotely.
The two sessions run June 22 to July 31 and Aug. 3 to Sept. 11. University Chancellor Gary S. May said in a statement that there is a chance some in-person lab classes may become available at some point during the second section, but only if state- and county-issued health directives change by then.
UC Davis and California State University, Sacramento each recently announced that their spring commencement ceremonies would be held virtually. Sacramento State’s graduation will be held online June 6, and UC Davis will hold its ceremony the following week on June 12.
Latest Sacramento-area numbers: Nearly 50 dead across region
Health officials in the four-county Sacramento region have reported a combined total of 48 deaths among 1,118 cases as of Friday afternoon. That represents a nearly 55 percent increase in deaths from a week ago and a 26 percent jump in infections, according to figures complied by The Bee.
The region’s approximate rate of doubling for deaths and cases is 12 days. In Sacramento County, there are twice as many cases now as there were about two weeks ago. In California, the rate of doubling is currently about 15 days.
Sacramento County has reported 896 cases and 32 deaths through Friday morning. Of the fatalities, 18 have come in the city of Sacramento, three in Elk Grove, two in Citrus Heights, one in Rancho Cordova and eight in unincorporated areas, the county says.
In an update at 10:55 a.m. Friday, Sacramento County public health officials disclosed 17 additional cases, compared with 26 new cases the previous day. No new deaths were reported either day, after Wednesday’s update in which the department said four people had died within the city of Sacramento.
El Dorado County reported 36 cases as of Friday afternoon, with no deaths yet observed. That’s one more case reported since Thursday. County health officials said there are now five active cases.
Placer County reports 130 cases and eight deaths as of Thursday and there were no new cases reported Friday. Only three new cases have been reported since Monday, but three deaths have also been announced this week. The county recently added an online dashboard for COVID-19 activity.
Yolo County has seen a large jump in confirmed cases, now at 126 as of Friday afternoon compared with 37 early last week. The county reported one new case on Friday afternoon, compared to nine new cases reported on Thursday afternoon. One more person has died from the virus as well as of Friday, with the death toll in Yolo now up to eight.
World numbers: 150,000 dead globally
According to the Johns Hopkins data map, over 2.24 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported around the world as of 5:30 p.m. Pacific time Friday. Nearly 700,000 of those are in the U.S., and of those, more than 36,700 have perished. The worldwide death toll has surpassed 150,000.
In the U.S., more than 17,000 people have died in New York state, including 13,200 in New York City; over 3,800 have died in New Jersey; Michigan has surpassed 2,200 fatalities; and about 1,250 have died in Massachusetts.
Johns Hopkins reports California’s death toll at 1,037 through Friday evening, with almost 500 of the fatalities reported in Los Angeles County. Connecticut, Illinois and Louisiana have each observed between about 1,000 and 1,200 deaths, according to the map.
Globally, the United States maintains by far the highest death count. The next five countries are all in Europe: Italy at more than 22,000, Spain at more than 19,000, France at nearly 18,000, the United Kingdom at just over 14,500 and Belgium at more than 5,000 as of early Friday.
Another 5,000 have died in Iran, 4,000 in Germany, 3,500 in the Netherlands and nearly 2,000 in Brazil.
The Hubei province of China, once the epicenter of the virus, had seen a considerable drop-off in growth of reported case totals and a death toll that had stagnated, until nearly 1,200 new deaths were reported by authorities this week, bringing the new total to just over 4,500 fatalities reported.
What is COVID-19? How is the coronavirus spread?
Coronavirus is spread through contact between people within 6 feet of each other, especially through coughing and sneezing that expels respiratory droplets that land in the mouths or noses of people nearby. The CDC says it’s possible to catch the disease COVID-19 by touching something that has the virus on it, and then touching your own face, “but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”
Symptoms of the virus that causes COVID-19 include fever, cough and shortness of breath, which may occur two days to two weeks after exposure. Most develop only mild symptoms, but some people develop more severe symptoms, including pneumonia, which can be fatal. The disease is especially dangerous to the elderly and others with weaker immune systems.
This story was originally published April 17, 2020 at 8:01 AM.
