Coronavirus updates: Newsom defends California reopening; capital region cases top 2,600
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and state and local health leaders have expressed support for the current strategy of phased reopening from the coronavirus shutdown, but with the statewide death toll surpassing 5,000 and some regions hit harder by the pandemic than others, the state says it is keeping an eye on more than a dozen counties.
The overall infection total continues to rise, and single-day increases in new cases have spiked near record highs over the past two weeks, but Newsom on Monday said some of the state’s most critical COVID-19 metrics — hospitalizations, ICU admissions and the percentage of test results coming back positive — remain stable as testing increases.
While the state now reports more than 150,000 lab-positive cases of the coronavirus and nearly 5,100 related deaths, as well as about 3,100 patients currently hospitalized and roughly 1,050 in the ICU, data tracked by the state Department of Public Health show that hospitalization and ICU totals have been on a relatively flat curve since mid-April. The state has about 53,000 surge beds available for COVID-19 patients, Newsom said.
“We never made the case that the stay-at-home order was a permanent state,” Newsom said Monday, in his first June news briefing devoted to COVID-19. “We wanted to buy time ... and we ultimately wanted to save lives and prepare for a pandemic that needs to take its course.”
As of Monday, 52 of California’s 58 counties had entered Phase 3 of reopening, while the state as a whole is in Phase 2. For counties with self-attested reopening plans, businesses including bars, zoos, movie theaters, gyms, hotels were allowed to reopen June 12 after nearly three full months of closure, as Newsom issued his statewide stay-at-home order March 19. This coming Friday, personal service businesses like nail salons and tattoo parlors will be able to join them.
Reopening businesses must follow guidelines issued by the state, as well as any additional requirements imposed by counties allowing the reopening. These include measures intended to increase social distancing, and in many cases ones that require or strongly encouraging mask use, which Newsom called critical in curbing spread of the virus that causes the disease known as COVID-19.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, Secretary of California Health and Human Services, said state officials are offering support to 13 counties with worrying trends, assisting by helping counties move patients to less overwhelmed hospitals or ensuring facilities have enough ventilators.
Those counties have been part of a fluctuating state watch list, where public health officials are keeping an eye out for sudden increases in hospitalizations, positive cases and other metrics. As of Tuesday morning, nine counties — Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Kings, Los Angeles San Joaquin, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura — are on that list. Sacramento County was briefly on the list last week due to a sudden increase in hospitalizations, which have since steadied.
Contact tracing challenges arise as public defy stay-home order
Newsom on Monday said the state has trained about 7,000 contact tracers and is on pace to hit its goal of 10,000 by the start of July.
Contact tracing for COVID-19 involves tracking down the known, recent interactions of someone who has tested positive. Tracers then notify those who have crossed paths with that person and advise them of the potential exposure so they can get a test and self-isolate.
A recent exposure incident in Butte County, though, showed how the process can hit snags. Health officials there discovered that a parishioner of Palermo Bible Family Church, who had attended a Mother’s Day service last month packed with more than 160 people, had tested positive for COVID-19.
But a team of six health workers dispatched to contact trace that group was only able to get in touch with about 15 percent of those who attended the service at Palermo, a Sacramento Bee review of county emails and interviews with officials showed.
As a result, Butte County health director Danette York had no idea how many of the parishioners and their close contacts got tested for the virus. In an interview, she told The Bee that she suspects they were reluctant because the Mother’s Day gathering was violating the statewide stay-at-home order.
As of that time, in-person church gatherings had been under a controversial ban by Newsom’s office, as health officials warned of large outbreaks that had been linked to churches.
“They thought they were going to be judged for attending a service that had not been opened up yet in the state,” York said, “and I believe they are very protective of the pastor and were afraid he would be judged and so they were more reluctant than they would have been under other circumstances.”
The focus of contact tracing is to gather as much information as possible in hopes of preventing or limiting the scope of an outbreak, as York explained, rather than judgment or punishment.
While some other countries have quarantine orders and contact tracing protocols that are strictly enforced using the force of law, contact tracing will likely never reach that level in the U.S., according to Arthur Caplan, director of the medical ethics program at New York University’s Langone Medical Center.
“We’re not going to do that here. We’re not going to fine or penalize people who won’t get involved in contact tracing,” he told The Bee. “But the way Americans usually do it is by shame and guilt … It’s pretty good, and it motivates people.”
Sacramento-area numbers: County passes 1,800 confirmed cases
Sacramento County health officials reported 31 new cases Tuesday morning, raising the infection total to 1,825, after adding 41 cases Monday and 37 Sunday, which were the two highest single-day case increases reported since mid-April.
There have been 63 deaths in the county from COVID-19, with the latest being reported last Thursday.
Approximately 427 of the county’s cases are considered active, with the Sacramento County health dashboard counting 1,335 cases as “likely recovered” as of Monday.
The county early last week was warned by the state about its rapidly increasing hospitalization total: from 19 patients in hospitals June 3 to 35 by June 5, then up to 39 by June 11. That figure declined to 28 as of a Tuesday update to the county dashboard.
Yolo County reported a total of 40 new cases in the past week, including three on Tuesday. The County saw its highest daily increase since April 11 last Thursday, counting 15 new cases. Countywide, 265 people have tested positive for coronavirus. The county’s death toll is 24. At least 17 of these deaths have been connected to an outbreak at Stollwood Convalescent Hospital in Woodland.
Placer County’s increase in coronavirus cases is surpassing the rates seen earlier in the pandemic. The county reported 21 new cases Tuesday and 18 in a Monday update for a total of 411 infections. Nine have died, and Placer County estimates 151 active cases as of Monday morning.
El Dorado County has maintained consistently low infection rates and is one of the few counties in California with no reported COVID-19 deaths. With one new case reported on Tuesday, 118 people have been infected, 57 of them from the Lake Tahoe region. The County has reported 99 recoveries and no current hospitalizations.
The four-county capital region has 2,619 known cases and 100 deaths from COVID-19 complications.
Sutter County, which has also seen relatively low numbers, has 20 cases since Thursday, including one Tuesday, bringing the total to 89. Three people have died there. In Yuba County, officials also reported one case Tuesday. The county has reported 37 cases and one death.
Concern over in-home gatherings, bars in Sacramento County
Sacramento County public health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson said the area’s rising infection numbers are being driven by increased testing, and that contact tracing investigations have showed that recent spikes are linked to large gatherings of people, such as birthday parties, rather than from recently reopened businesses.
Gatherings inside homes, beyond one’s immediate household members, remain prohibited under the state and county health orders.
But Beilenson also said he was “concerned about the bars probably more than anything else,” following reports in The Bee and from other media about packed bars where social distancing measures were not being followed on Friday, the first night those establishments were allowed back open. Many other bars did follow the rules, or have held off on reopening for now.
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 article was updated at 12:26 p.m. on June 17 to correct the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the Sacramento area from 120 to 100.
This story was originally published June 16, 2020 at 11:12 AM.
