Coronavirus updates: California shuts down many indoor businesses ahead of July 4
Faced with infection and hospitalization figures worsening by the day for more than two weeks, California is beginning its first major reversal of economic reopening from the raging coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday ordered 19 counties with troubling COVID-19 trends to immediately close a wide slate of nonessential indoor businesses for at least three weeks. The group of counties, which includes Sacramento and Los Angeles, combine for about 70 percent of the state’s population.
The governor ordered indoor restaurants plus entertainment venues like movie theaters, bowling alleys, arcades and card rooms to shut down.
Also ordered to close are bars — indoor or outdoor — which received the state’s blessing to reopen less than three weeks ago, on June 12.
Restaurants in the affected counties may still offer takeout, delivery and outdoor dining. Newsom’s new restrictions made no mention of places of worship, gyms or personal service businesses such as barbershops.
California has reported more than 240,000 positive cases of the respiratory disease, of which at least 6,163 people have died, the state’s health department said in a Thursday update, adding more than 7,500 new cases for the second-most ever in a single day. The state’s death toll increased by 73 from Wednesday.
Close to 80,000 infections, about one-third of the all-time total, have emerged in the past 14 days.
Hospitalizations have also soared at an alarming pace: 5,355 patients with confirmed cases of the respiratory disease were in hospitals Tuesday, with 1,676 of them in intensive care, the state Department of Public Health reported Wednesday.
On June 14, there were only about 3,100 patients in hospitals and 1,050 in the ICU. After staying relatively stable from mid-April to mid-June, both hospital figures have increased every single day since June 18.
Test positivity is rising fast in California, which has now performed more than 4.3 million diagnostic tests. About 6.9 percent of all tests conducted in the past seven days, and 6.3 percent of all in the past 14 days, have come back positive. That metric, which can be a fairly reliable indicator of true spread for the virus while taking into account increased testing capacity, was near 4 percent for nearly all of May.
The 19 counties included in Newsom’s restrictions are those that have been on a watch list maintained by the state health department for more than three days due to increasing COVID-19 activity. Among other thresholds, counties can end up on that list if their hospitalization rate increases too rapidly or if their test rate positivity exceeds 8 percent.
The counties included as of Thursday morning are: Contra Costa, Fresno, Glenn, Imperial, Kern, Kings, Los Angeles, Merced, Orange, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Solano, Stanislaus, Tulare and Ventura.
California has been under Newsom’s stay-at-home order 15 weeks as of Thursday. After the initial restrictions set March 19 forced virtually all businesses deemed non-essential to close, a number of sectors including dine-in restaurants, in-store retail and personal services like nail and hair salons had been phased back in from mid-May to mid-June across most of the state’s 58 counties.
Younger patients testing positive in Sacramento County
In new data that gives a more precise breakdown of age groups for confirmed infections, Sacramento County’s COVID-19 dashboard now shows that close to half of all positive tests — just over 1,700 — have come in people age 39 or younger.
Nearly 150 children under age 10 have tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19 respiratory disease, the county now reports.
Just under 2,000 positive cases involve adults ages 18 to 49. Another 470 were in the 50-59 age group, close to 390 were in their 60s, just over 200 were in their 70s and about 225 were 80 or older.
Sixty-four of the people who have died from COVID-19 in Sacramento County were age 65 or older; the remaining five were younger than 65, though their precise ages have not been reported.
Sacramento, Yolo counties shutting down indoor activities
Newsom’s order impacts Sacramento County, where concern is growing as both new infections and hospitalized cases have surged dramatically in recent weeks.
State data show the county had 109 patients in hospital beds as of Wednesday. Day-over-day growth slowed some, with the hospitalized total increasing by just three after double-digit increases earlier this week. That metric was at 77 four ago earlier on Saturday, at 33 on June 15 and all the way down at seven as of May 21. The pandemic’s previous local spike came in early April, when hospitalization totals were in the 70s.
Of the 109 hospitalized, 31 are in the ICU. That’s 18 more than the 13 who required intensive care a little over two weeks ago.
Sacramento is on the state watch list due to its increased hospitalizations, but it has also seen its test-positivity rate surge in recent days to 7 percent, the county’s public health dashboard shows. The World Health Organization recommend a positive rate below 5 percent before reopening, while the state health department puts counties on notice at 8 percent.
Sacramento County health officials say they will formally revise the local health order on Thursday to comply with Newsom’s order.
County health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson said Sacramento’s rising virus infection numbers have been due mainly to family gatherings in homes for birthdays and graduations. But he said he agrees with the governor’s decision that stronger steps are appropriate.
The new round of closures will likely deal another devastating blow to Sacramento’s restaurant and bar industry, with local owners calling the indefinite suspension of indoor dining frustrating and demoralizing.
“I need to open for dine-in to (make) more sales to cover all the overhead I’m paying for,” Ryan Young, owner of Kintaro Sushi Bar in Elk Grove, told The Sacramento Bee on Wednesday.
About 78,000 area residents worked in restaurants or bars before the economy shut down in March. About 33,000 of them lost their jobs in April, although payrolls rebounded slightly as the economy started to revive. Nonetheless, about 26,000 restaurant and bar employees were still out of work as of mid-May, according to the latest figures available, and represent a main reason why the region’s unemployment rate has shot up to 13.6 percent.
One venue of note, the primarily outdoor Sacramento Zoo, announced Wednesday it will remain open.
Many of Sacramento County’s nearby neighbors, including Yolo, Placer, El Dorado, Nevada, Yuba and Sutter, are not on the state watch list.
But Yolo health officials said Wednesday they will voluntarily take the same steps as Sacramento, either today or Friday.
Yolo, like many counties statewide, has seen a record spike in infections the last two weeks. The county’s COVID-19 dashboard shows 261 of its all-time total of 555 infections have been reported in the past two weeks. Just four patients in Yolo were hospitalized as of Tuesday, state data posted Wednesday show.
‘Botched’ inmate transfers cause major state prison outbreaks
Lawmakers during a hearing Wednesday criticized the California state prison system’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, pointing to a “horribly botched transfer” of inmates to San Quentin believed to have caused the state’s worst outbreak among the incarcerated.
The hearing before the Senate Committee on Public Safety focused on the escalating outbreak at San Quentin, but officials warned of the dangerous pattern emerging as the virus is carried into prisons by inmates and employees, where it rapidly spreads and then infects workers who carry the disease back into the community.
“The plain fact is the virus is out of control at our state prison facilities and it is defying every curve we point to for progress,” said Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley.
Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, labeled the transfer the “worst prison health screwup in state history.”
As of Thursday morning, San Quentin had at least 1,259 active reported cases of COVID-19 among inmates, with just 14 cases recovered, according to a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation data dashboard. At least 114 employees at San Quentin have tested positive. The prison, California’s oldest, has an inmate population of about 3,500.
Across the state prison system, nearly 2,700 inmates have active COVID-19 cases as of Thursday morning; another nearly 2,300 have recovered; 22 more have died — 16 of them at the California Institute for Men at Chino, the site of California’s first major state prison outbreak; and 111 prisoners were released with still-active cases of the virus. Two state prison employees have also died, CDCR reports.
The department is building extra tents and working to free up space to allow for better distancing within prisons — and transfers have been halted entirely.
What will increased enforcement look like in California?
During Wednesday’s announcement, Newsom said the state is establishing “enforcement strike teams” that will workplaces that are not complying with statewide pandemic-related orders. The teams will include personnel from the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Cal-Osha, the California Highway Patrol and a few other agencies.
Enforcement will be focused toward noncompliant businesses, Newsom said, and will emphasize education over “punishment.”
Days after Newsom and the state issued a statewide mandatory mask order June 18, which remains in place and instructs people to wear masks in most indoor, public situations with limited exemptions, some law enforcement agencies in the capital region — including the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office — quickly issued statements saying they would not be enforcing the face covering requirement.
“This is not a police issue,” the Placerville Police Department wrote in a Facebook post.
Newsom, along with local and state health officials, are increasingly urging Californians to adhere to social distancing and mask requirements, and not to gather privately in groups, with contact tracing investigations like those being done in Sacramento County continuing to show that these types of gatherings are spreading the virus widely among friends and extended family members, who can then transmit the virus in other social circles.
Because enforcement of social distancing protocols is effectively impossible at private residences, health leaders are increasing their urgency in their messaging to the public regarding the danger associated with these gatherings and celebrations, especially as the July 4 holiday is now just two days away.
Latest Sacramento-area numbers: More than 5,100 infected, 104 dead
The four-county capital region has surpassed 5,100 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the roughly four months it has been spreading. Of those, at least 104 have died.
Sacramento County has reported 3,559 total infections and 69 fatalities from the disease, last updated Thursday morning with 162 new cases and one new death. Over 2,100 of those cases and 34 of the deaths have come within capital city limits, according to the county dashboard. County health officials estimate 1,751 cases as “likely recovered,” which means health officials believe there could be more than 1,700 confirmed, active cases in Sacramento County.
Placer County now reports 754 infections and 11 total deaths, last updated Thursday morning with 30 new cases. Placer reported a record 41 new cases Wednesday and another 40 Tuesday. Two deaths were reported last week after about a month with none. Placer had 17 confirmed cases in the hospital, with four of them in the ICU, as of the most recent update. Based on its dashboard, Placer estimates about 239 cases are active.
Yolo County reported 28 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, and now 583 have been infected and 24 have died in the county. The county reported a record-setting 29 new cases Wednesday. The increase comes after 25 were reported infected Tuesday and 23 new cases were reported Monday. Seventeen of the 24 fatalities have come at Stollwood Convalescent Hospital in Woodland, the site of an outbreak first reported in April.
El Dorado County has kept its numbers low, but as of Thursday afternoon, 206 people have tested positive for the virus, and five people are currently in the hospital for COVID-19. Four of those hospitalized are each being treated in an intensive care unit. The county reported eight new cases Thursday. No one has died from the virus in the county, where about half of all cases stem from the Lake Tahoe region.
Sutter County reported seven new COVID-19 cases Wednesday and has a total of 197 cases and three deaths, with five people currently hospitalized. Yuba County reported 19 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday and has a total of 94 cases and one death due to the virus. The county had reported six new cases on Tuesday.
World numbers: 519,000 dead, 128,000 in U.S.
More than 519,000 people have died of COVID-19 worldwide, including over 128,000 in the United States, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. accounts for more than 2.7 million of the 10.8 million confirmed coronavirus infections as of Thursday afternoon.
Brazil follows the U.S. at more than 61,000 deaths as it approaches 1.5 million total infections.
Next in terms of death toll are the Untied Kingdom at about 44,000 fatalities, Italy at nearly 35,000, France at almost 30,000, Spain and Mexico each at about 28,500 and India at nearly 18,000 dead.
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 July 2, 2020 at 8:25 AM.
