Coronavirus updates: California hospitalizations at all-time high, 11,000 infected in Sacramento region
The Sacramento region hit a sobering milestone over the weekend, with coronavirus cases surging past 10,000 and climbing, as California continues to see equally alarming increases in infections and hospitalizations.
As of Monday morning, the virus has infected at least 11,000 residents in the six-county Sacramento area, and killed 147. The majority of the cases and fatalities have occurred in Sacramento County, where local health officials are increasingly worried by testing shortages and dwindling resources at hospitals — only about 14.5 percent of intensive care beds are available in the county, according to state health department data.
Sacramento County also set a new record Monday: Another 391 people were reported infected with the virus, shattering the previous record of the highest number of cases reported in a single day in the county.
Similar trends have cropped up across California, prompting California Gov. Gavin Newsom to announce widespread shutdowns on businesses and schools last week to slow the record-breaking number of infections and hospitalizations.
More than 391,500 Californians have been infected by the virus, and 7,694 have been killed, as of Monday morning. Hospitalizations are now at an all-time high in California: As of Monday, 6,921 people are in the hospital with COVID-19, and about 28 percent of those hospitalized patients are receiving intensive care.
Newsom last Monday ordered the closure statewide of all indoor business at restaurants, wineries, theaters, zoos, museums, card rooms, bars and family entertainment centers.
In addition, shopping malls, gyms, indoor church worship, nail salons and barber shops are also shut down for indoor activity in counties representing about 80 percent of Californians, including Sacramento, Placer, Yolo, Sutter and Yuba counties. The affected counties are those that had been on the state’s monitoring list for troubling coronavirus trends for three or more days.
And last Friday, Newsom announced that all public and private schools in counties on the state’s COVID-19 watch list for concerning coronavirus trends — 32 counties in all currently — will be unable to physically reopen their doors this fall.
As of Monday, over the last two weeks about 7.4 percent of tests are returning positive. That’s an increase from the 14-day average reported two weeks ago, when about 6.8 percent of tests were returning positive. The growth means the increase in cases cannot be attributed to simply more testing being conducted.
Because of the virus’ incubation period, it will likely take another week, if not longer, before local health officials see whether the new shutdown across wide swaths of the economy will have its intended effect.
California high school fall sports delayed until January
It came as no real surprise, but still no less disappointing: High school sports will not happen this fall in California, including top-flight football programs.
The move is a first in nearly 100 years for a state rich in prep athletics, with nationally ranked teams, top athletes and communities that rally around campus events as the epicenter of regional pride.
The California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for prep sports, made it official Monday morning from its Sacramento home base. The move was made as the CIF continues to try and quell the spread of the coronavirus that shuttered schools when the pandemic first hit in March.
With most California schools closed for on-campus instruction this fall under a mandate announced Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the CIF said it had no choice but to delay the start of seasons by pushing the sports calendar into 2021.
Answering questions about schooling during COVID-19 pandemic
The Bee’s Sawsan Morrar over the weekend answered frequent questions among parents about how distance-learning this fall may play out, including:
▪ When will it be deemed safe to reopen?
▪ Will there be exceptions for special education students, English language learners or other vulnerable communities?
▪ How will distance learning look different than the spring?
Read answers to those questions and more at sacbee.com.
Military doctors headed to short-staffed California hospitals
The Air Force has assigned 160 doctors, nurses and other medical health specialists to help California hospitals experiencing staff shortages and a growing number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19.
The Associated Press reported that they will specially help increase capacity in intensive care units. Teams arrived starting last week, including 20 people each to the Adventist Health Lodi Memorial Hospital in San Joaquin County and Eisenhower Health Hospital in Riverside County.
“I think people erroneously think of hospital capacity as all about beds and space,” Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association, told The AP. “It’s far more than a mattress and a pillow. The most important resource are the people who are taking care of patients.”
1st death in El Dorado County reported
Over the weekend, El Dorado County — long one of the few counties in the state without a COVID-19 death — reported its first fatality related to the coronavirus.
Public Health Officer Dr. Nancy Williams said the patient was an elderly man from the Lake Tahoe area of the county. El Dorado County has kept its infection rate relatively low. A total of 394 people have been infected as of Friday, and two people were being treated in intensive care units.
The Lake Tahoe region, however, accounts for the majority of the county’s coronavirus cases and has seen significant tourism activity in recent weeks. Almost 200 of the county’s total infections were in people near Lake Tahoe.
El Dorado County is the last county in the greater Sacramento area to have remained off the state’s regional coronavirus watchlist, allowing slightly more freedom from economic restrictions than many of its neighbors.
Newly opened restaurants face uphill battle
The coronavirus pandemic has stripped Sacramento’s restaurants of their dining rooms and has many struggling to keep the lights on. For those that have yet to get their feet settled, it’s especially hard.
At least 25 restaurants have opened in Sacramento and Placer counties in the last three months, trying to carve out a place in their respective neighborhoods while handcuffed by social distancing requirements and fears of virus transmission.
“We opened in the middle of a pandemic, so people don’t know what we are and where we are and that we’re open for business,” Maydoon co-owner Idean Farid said. “Nobody really knows what Maydoon is or what kind of restaurant we are ... it’s hard to explain your story with takeout.”
Sacramento County nixed restaurant dine-in service nine days after Maydoon opened, though they’ve added about six outdoor tables. Customers who know about Maydoon have been extremely supportive so far, Farid said, but word-of-mouth has spread slower and volume remains lower than anticipated.
Rocklin church defies state order, holds indoor service
Pastor Greg Fairrington prayed for Gavin Newsom during a fiery sermon Sunday while acting in defiance of the California governor’s public health order prohibiting indoor worship.
Fairrington, the lead pastor at Destiny Christian Church in Rocklin, told his south Placer County congregation they were engaged in a spiritual battle between good and evil. He said the church has been called to fight the government for the right to worship freely, free of persecution and without restriction, even in the clutches of a global pandemic.
“God has not called us to be defiant for the sake of being defiant,” Fairrington said. “I read an article. It came out … Tuesday or Wednesday. It came out in The Bee: ‘Pastor defies governor’s orders.’
“If all we are is defying and being defiant, we are wasting our time. Our call, our mission, is to pull heaven down into Earth. That’s our call. That’s why we are in this room. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.”
About 500 people attended the 9 a.m. service, according to church officials. They said there were about 375 inside the 1,500-seat church — 25 percent of capacity — and 215 more seated outside beneath the giant white crosses that tower over Highway 65. Hundreds were lined up in front of the church shortly after 8:30 a.m., many without masks and most standing within inches of each other.
The Bee could not independently verify information provided by the church. Reporters were not allowed to observe the indoor or outdoor services. They were asked to wait outside in a designated area and were not permitted to speak to congregants.
Amid closures, homeschooling sees ‘explosive’ interest
As the COVID-19 pandemic pushes Sacramento County schools into a distance-learning-only fall and families deal with uncertainty about when in-person learning will resume, parents have begun to seek alternatives to Zoom classrooms.
Home schooling is at the top of the list for many.
J. Allen Weston, the executive director of the National Home School Association, said that the association has seen an “explosive increase” in interest over the past few weeks, as parents look toward home schooling as an alternative.
The association increased the size of its inbox to accommodate the new inquiries.
“We used to get 40 or 50 emails a day,” Weston said. “Now we’re getting thousands.”
About 3 percent of the students in the U.S. were home-schooled in the 2011-12 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But recent surveys have shown that 10 percent of parents are now strongly considering home schooling their children, said James Mason, vice president of the Home School Legal Defense Association.
Latest Sacramento-area numbers: 149 dead, more than 11,000 infected
Over the weekend, the six-county region of Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Yolo, Sutter and Yuba surpassed another grim milestone: 11,1196 people have been infected by the coronavirus as of Monday morning. The virus has killed a total of 149 in the region.
Sacramento County reported 391 new cases Monday, bringing the total number of confirmed coronavirus infections to 7,326 since the pandemic started. Thus far, the virus has killed 96 people, according to the county’s data dashboard updated Monday.
There are 204 COVID-19 patients in Sacramento County hospital beds as of Monday, an all-time high. Of those, 70 are in intensive care units, according to state public health data. About 14.5 percent of ICU beds are currently available.
On Monday, the county set a new record for the most infections reported in a single day. The last record was set July 4, when 333 infections were reported.
Placer County has reported a total of 1,403 infections in the county, as of Monday. There are now 51 people hospitalized because the virus, and 10 in intensive care. Eleven people have died of COVID-19 in Placer County thus far. The vast majority of cases, about 80 percent, have originated from the south Placer area including Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln.
Yolo County on Monday evening reported two new deaths due to complications from COVID-19 and 34 more people infected with the virus. The county, as of Monday, has reported a total of 1,196 cases and 34 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Over the weekend, the county reported 39 new COVID-19 cases and one additional death. About 1 in 10 infections have been linked to outbreaks at six long-term care facilities in Yolo County, resulting in 112 people infected and 20 deaths. Stollwood Convalescent Hospital’s outbreak, which was first reported in April, has accounted for 17 deaths.
El Dorado County reported 49 new COVID-19 cases that accumulated on Saturday, Sunday and Monday; it does not update case numbers over the weekend. The county, as of Monday afternoon, has reported a total of 443 cases. The county reported its first death due to complication from COVID-19 over the weekend. Nearly half of the county’s cases have been reported in the Lake Tahoe region. El Dorado Hills reported 21 of the 49 new cases over the weekend. On Monday, three people were hospitalized for COVID-19 treatment; one of them was in intensive care.
North of the four-county capital region, Sutter County reported 19 new COVID-19 cases Monday evening for a total of 539 confirmed infections. Of those, nine people are in the hospital. Four people in the county have died since the pandemic started, but no new deaths were reported Monday. The county also reported 19 new cases on Sunday.
Yuba County reported 19 new COVID-19 cases Monday evening for a total of 289 confirmed infections. Of those, five people were in the hospital Monday. The county reported 13 new cases Sunday. Three have died in the county thus far, with no new deaths reported.
In the Yuba-Sutter area, about a third of the patients testing positive showed no symptoms of the virus, based on local public health data reported.
World numbers: Death toll over 608,000, more than 14.6 million infected
Over 14.6 million people have tested positive for COVID-19 worldwide and more than 608,000 have died as of Monday afternoon, according to data maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
About one-quarter of each — about 3.82 million infections and nearly 141,000 deaths — have come in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins.
After the U.S., the coronavirus has hit hardest in Brazil, where over 2.1 million have tested positive and over 80,000 have died.
Next by death toll are the United Kingdom at more than 45,000, Mexico at over 39,000, Italy at more than 35,000, France at just over 30,000, Spain at more than 28,000 and India at just under 28,000, according to Johns Hopkins.
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 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 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 people 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 20, 2020 at 8:26 AM.