Coronavirus updates: California reaches 1,200 deaths; protest arrives at Capitol
California has officially been shut down for more than a calendar month, and while there have been promising signs in the fight against the coronavirus, a specific time frame for reopening remains elusive.
Efforts to flatten the pandemic’s growth curve are still being credited with California’s relatively low death and infection totals — more than 1,200 have died and about 31,000 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed, according to the state public health department and a Sacramento Bee survey of data released by county health departments.
The United States as a whole surpassed 40,000 deaths from the virus Sunday, according to a data map by Johns Hopkins University, and the nation has reported more than 783,000 cases as of late Monday afternoon. A large proportion of cases and deaths have come in New York state, where more than 250,000 have been infected and over 18,000 have died.
California, with roughly 40 million people, makes up close to 12 percent of the U.S. population but has reported fewer than 3 percent of its coronavirus deaths thus far.
Still, the Golden State’s death toll continued a steady climb last week and into the weekend, with at least 1,208 COVID-19 fatalities officially reported as of Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said during Monday’s daily news briefing, an increase by 42 over the previous day’s update.
Before that, California’s total grew by a record high 95 fatalities reported between last Thursday and Friday, followed by 94 more deaths from Friday to Saturday, according to the state Department of Public Health.
More than 500 of California’s coronavirus deaths were reported by the state heath department between April 11 and this past Saturday, with the death total growing from 651 to 1,166 in that one-week span, a 79 percent increase.
Newsom on March 19 ordered an unprecedented, statewide stay-at-home mandate that effectively brought public life and most of the economy to a halt. California became the first state to do so in the face of COVID-19, the disease caused by the highly contagious coronavirus.
Early last week, Newsom and state health leaders unveiled a six-point “framework” for what would need to happen before California could ease its way out of that order. The points included, among others, much more widespread testing protocols, better protection for vulnerable populations and sufficient medical resources and staffing to handle surges in coronavirus cases.
But Newsom said it may take until late April or early May for the state to even be able to share a general sense of the actual time frame Californians may be looking at for those criteria to be met.
Newsom, during Monday’s news conference, again said there is still work to do in bending the state’s coronavirus curve to where it needs to be.
“You are beginning to flatten the curve, but it is still, nonetheless, rising,” he said, adding that the state needs a sustained “downward trend” in hospitalizations before a reopening plan can start to form.
Latest Sacramento-area numbers: More than 50 dead
The four-county Sacramento region saw three additional COVID-19 deaths reported over the weekend: two in Sacramento County and one in Yolo County. Placer County remains at eight total coronavirus deaths, and no fatalities from the virus have been reported yet in El Dorado County.
On a more optimistic note, Sacramento County in a Monday morning update reported just 15 new cases and no additional coronavirus deaths.
The county, and many other health departments, have had a recent trend of reporting few new cases over the weekends: Just six were added to the tally between Friday and Sunday, and only 11 between the previous Friday and Sunday, which were Good Friday and Easter. The case total then jumped by 18 the Monday after Easter and again by 25 by last Tuesday’s update.
As of Monday afternoon, there have been a total of 1,252 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases and 52 COVID-19 deaths across Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties.
Sacramento County now reports 34 deaths among 940 confirmed cases, as of 9:45 a.m. Monday. Of the fatalities, 19 have come in the capital city, three in Elk Grove, two in Citrus Heights, one in Rancho Cordova and nine in unincorporated parts of the county, according to the county public health department website.
El Dorado County has reported 38 cases of COVID-19 so far with no deaths, last updated Monday afternoon, according to its public health department. Two additional cases were reported over the weekend in the Lake Tahoe area, bringing the total there to 13. There are 14 cases reported in El Dorado Hills, five in the greater Placerville area and the rest are scattered throughout the foothills.
Placerville City Council members last week voted 5-0 last Tuesday to instruct the city manager, mayor and vice mayor to write a letter to Newsom asking him to allow Placerville to reopen soon.
“This community can open with a measured approach,” said Placerville Vice Mayor Dennis Thomas, who himself was recovering from a case of COVID-19. “I don’t think we should sit idle and our businesses should sit idle when it’s not necessary.”
Placer County reports 132 confirmed coronavirus cases and eight total COVID-19 deaths, last updated 10 a.m. Monday. No new cases or fatalities were reported between Sunday and Monday mornings. More than 110 of the cases have come in South Placer, which includes Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln, according to the county’s public health website.
Yolo County reported 142 cases and 10 fatalities as of Monday afternoon, including five new cases and one new death since Sunday. Woodland accounts for about half of all confirmed case at 72, followed by West Sacramento at 44, 16 in Davis and 10 in Winters and unincorporated Yolo County.
Anti-shutdown protests pop up nationwide, including Sacramento
A group with a history of protest over such hot-button issues as vaccination is slated to protest at the Capitol on Monday against California’s stay-at-home orders.
Freedom Angels, which coordinated protests in 2019 against vaccination legislation in the form of Senate Bill 276, has scheduled a protest on the west steps of the Capitol at noon.
It was not immediately clear Monday morning why officials with the state Capitol would grant a permit for a protest event that could bring as many as 500 people together amid the stay-home order, which prohibits non-essential gatherings of any size.
The California Highway Patrol’s capitol protection section, which issues such permits, referred questions Monday to the Senate Rules Committee. An official with that committee referred questions to the sergeant at arms, who said the Senate president pro tem’s office would have to answer. The pro tem’s office was looking into whether the permit was valid.
The Sacramento protest was planned to have begun with set-up at 8 a.m. and a program to start at 8:15 a.m., according to the permit website. But a Facebook post from last week touting the protest said it would instead begin at noon, and dozens began to arrive late in the morning.
Freedom Angels co-founder Tara Thornton argued that the stay-home measures were putting undue financial burden on Californians.
“People need to get back to work, get back to life, get back into contact with their loved ones who they’re isolated from, they need to be able to have a paycheck,” Thornton said on social media before Monday’s demonstration. “This is the grounds they will enslave us upon.”
Freedom Angels did not respond to questions from The Sacramento Bee, but a flyer posted to social media urges participants in “Operation Gridlock” to bring signs and flags.
Images circulated on social media last week from protests across the country, including one last Monday at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. During Gov. Mike DeWine’s daily coronavirus briefing, protesters pressed up against the statehouse’s glass doors and called for the governor to reopen the state. One image, captured by Joshua A. Bickel of The Columbus Dispatch, gained viral attention online, with a number of commenters saying the scene looked like something out of a zombie movie.
California reports first state prison inmate death from coronavirus
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on Sunday announced that an inmate at the California Institution for Men in Chino has died from coronavirus complications, becoming the first death among at least 115 prisoners statewide who have tested positive for the virus. As of Sunday, the Chino prison had 59 of those cases.
Corrections officials said the inmate died at a hospital away from the prison, and that an exact cause of death has yet to be determined.
The death came as the state prison system faces calls for emergency action coming from inmates, their families, attorneys and advocates who say the overcrowded institutions will lead to deadly outbreaks.
What to know about unemployment benefits
If you have been laid off from a job where your employer contributes to the state’s unemployment insurance program, you can apply for regular state unemployment benefits. Those benefits, normally up to $450 a week, will have another $600 a week automatically added by the state Employment Development Department during the coronavirus crisis.
More information and answers to Sacramento Bee readers’ questions — including what to do if you’re self-employed, what to do if your hours were reduced and when the $600 payments are scheduled to stop — can be found here.
World numbers: More than 168,000 dead
The coronavirus has killed nearly 170,000 people worldwide among over 2.4 million confirmed infections, according to the data map by Johns Hopkins University.
Roughly one-quarter of each total have come in the U.S., where more than 765,000 had been infected and over 40,000 had died as of Monday afternoon. New York state accounts for nearly 18,500 of those deaths, with almost 15,000 coming in New York City alone.
More than 4,300 more have died in New Jersey, according to Johns Hopkins. More than 2,400 have died in Michigan. Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Louisiana and Connecticut have all reported between 1,000 and 2,000 deaths.
Worldwide, the U.S. fatality total is followed by Italy at more than 24,000 dead, Spain at nearly 21,000, France at over 20,000 and the United Kingdom at 16,500. Belgium and Iran have both suffered more than 5,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins. China, which revised its death total in the Hubei province last week, has reported more than 4,600 fatalities.
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 20, 2020 at 7:54 AM.
