Coronavirus updates: 4th death reported in California, NCAA bars fans from March Madness
A woman in her 90s residing at an assisted living facility became Sacramento County’s first coronavirus death and the third reported in California, authorities announced Tuesday. On Wednesday, a fourth was announced, this one in Los Angeles County. In all, the state has reported more than 160 confirmed cases among more than 1,100 coronavirus infections across the United States.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, in a Wednesday briefing announced that COVID-19 can now be “characterized as a pandemic.”
“Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly,” he said. “It is a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death.”
Two of California’s four deaths have come in the greater Sacramento area: Tuesday’s death, which county authorities described as being caused by complications of the coronavirus, plus that of a 71-year-old Rocklin man who succumbed last week, according to Placer County public health officials.
Another came Monday in Santa Clara County, where authorities have reported a state-leading 45 cases of the virus, which has officially been designated COVID-19.
Each region has taken dramatic measures this week in efforts to cut down person-to-person contact that would allow the disease to spread further.
No fans at March Madness, NCAA says
NCAA President Mark Emmert on Wednesday announced that upcoming championship events, including this year’s Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, will be played without fans in attendance.
The unprecedented move will have the two bracketed tournaments played “with only essential staff and limited family attendance,” Emmert’s statement said. “While I understand how disappointing this is for all fans of our sports, my decision is based on the current understanding of how COVID-19 is progressing in the United States. This decision is in the best interest of public health.”
Golden 1 Center in Sacramento is scheduled to host first- and second-round games of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament on March 20 and March 22.
As of the time of the NCAA announcement, the Sacramento Kings are continuing for now to play games in front of fans, and will host the New Orleans Pelicans tonight. However, the county recommends fans 60 and older avoid the game and other large gatherings. The NBA’s Board of Governors, made up of team owners, has a conference call scheduled later today to discuss how the league should handle the elevating coronavirus crisis.
California’s 4th death reported, first in LA County
A coronavirus patient in Los Angeles County has died, public health officials announced during a live-streamed press conference early Wednesday afternoon.
It is the first COVID-19 death for the county. The patient who died was a woman who was visiting the Los Angeles area, officials said.
Los Angeles County also reported six additional cases Wednesday, bringing the county’s total up to 27 as of Wednesday.
No bans yet by Sacramento County, but Sac State cancels events
Sacramento County health officials on Wednesday said they have no plans – at the moment – to issue a ban on major group events. Nationally, states and local areas have begun instituting such bans in recent days in hopes of suppressing the spread of the virus.
Santa Clara County issued a ban several days ago as the total eclipsed 40 confirmed cases. San Francisco announced a ban on Wednesday morning of events of more than 1,000 people.
Should a ban be instituted here, Sacramento Kings home games would be affected. The team has a home game tonight, then Sunday and again Tuesday.
Sacramento County health chief Peter Beilenson said the county is trying to tack a “nuanced” track, so far, rather than issue a major ban.
“If there was a conference of seniors, an AARP conference of 150 in Sacramento County we might recommend not doing that or postponing that,” he said, “whereas if there was a robotics event of high school students, even if they got exposed even if they got the illness it’ll only be mild or no symptoms, that it would be OK to go ahead.”
Phil Serna, chairman of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, said he will talk with county health officials and with the Sacramento Kings today about health safety protocols to put into place for the Kings’ game Wednesday night. Golden 1 Center holds more than 17,000 fans.
Sacramento State is canceling or postponing all “in-person events,” but not classes, for the remainder of the school year out of concern for the growing coronavirus outbreak, the university announced Wednesday.
Effective Thursday and lasting through the end of the spring semester in late May, all events must be canceled, postponed or “moved to a virtual format,” Sacramento State tweeted.
“Classes have not been cancelled,” the university tweeted. “Instructors have been encouraged to shift part or all of their course content to a non-face-to-face setting and teach their classes virtually. Students should contact their faculty regarding whether classes have been moved to a virtual format.”
Decisions regarding spring commencement ceremonies, which are supposed to take place at Golden 1 Center, are still pending.
San Francisco bans large gatherings
The city of San Francisco on Wednesday morning announced it is banning all gatherings of more than 1,000 people.
San Francisco’s health officer issued the prohibitive order Wednesday, Mayor London Breed announced in a tweet. The ban is effective immediately, she said.
San Francisco District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney tweeted that the ban will last at least two weeks, and that it will include Golden State Warriors games.
The Warriors are slated to host the Nets on Thursday and the Hawks on March 25.
In a statement Wednesday morning, the Warriors announced that Thursday’s game will be played at Chase Center with no fans in attendance. The team said all other events at Chase Center through March 21 will be canceled or postponed, leaving the status of the March 25 game to be determined.
The San Francisco Giants in a statement Wednesday announced it the team is canceling a March 24 exhibition game against the Oakland A’s, which was set to be played at Oracle Park, the Giants’ home venue.
“We have no other large public gatherings scheduled at Oracle Park during this (two week) time period,” the statement said. “We are in the process of working with Major League Baseball and the A’s to finalize alternative arrangements. We will make that information available as soon as possible.
The Giants’ regular season home opener against the Dodgers is scheduled for April 3.
“Public health must be first priority,” Haney tweeted.
UC Berkeley journalism students asked to self-quarantine after potential exposure at New Orleans conference
Two dozen UC Berkeley students who may have been exposed to coronavirus at a Louisiana conference have been asked to self-quarantine for the next two weeks.
“Last weekend, 24 students from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism attended a journalism conference (the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting) in New Orleans,” university spokeswoman Janet Gilmore wrote in an email to The Bee Wednesday. “The conference sponsor recently announced that one of the attendees is suspected of having COVID-19. It is not confirmed.
“Out of caution, the dean of the graduate school has asked these students to self-isolate for the next two weeks.”
More than 1,000 journalists who attended the conference have been notified of the potential exposure, including McClatchy journalists from the Miami Herald, Raleigh News & Observer, Charlotte Observer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fresno Bee, the McClatchy Washington Bureau and the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Numerous other events, gatherings canceled in Bay Area, Sacramento
Santa Clara officials on Monday mandated a countywide ban on all gatherings of more than 1,000 people. The ban is set to last at least three weeks, and it could force the NHL’s San Jose Sharks to play their home games at SAP Center without fans or at alternate venues. The games could also be postponed.
Over the weekend in Sacramento County, Elk Grove Unified School District announced that its spring break planned for April would be moved up to this week, a decision that initially canceled all classes, academic and sports activities for the week. After some heated discussion, the district reversed part of its decision and allowed school activities — including a critical boys basketball playoff game for Sheldon High School — to proceed through this Wednesday, though campuses are still closed.
Other cancellations or postponements have been reported in the greater Sacramento area:
▪ UC Davis has canceled next week’s in-person final exams and will choose an alternative option, which will likely mean online finals for many students. The university also mandated the cancellation or postponement of any event through the end of March that’s expected to include more than 150 people. However, as of Tuesday, the cancellations did not include classes, NCAA events or events at the Mondavi Center.
▪ Rocklin Unified School District canceled many events, overnight field trips and air travel for instruction or business purposes through April 12. Extracurricular activities such as clubs, band, choir, theater and dance rehearsals or performances must also be canceled or postponed, district officials said. All athletic events not sponsored by the California Interscholastic Federation have been canceled, and CIF-sponsored events will be played under strict guidelines for social distancing, and with spectators limited to immediate family members
▪ All Yolo County library programs have been canceled through the end of March, including classes, events and community use of library meeting rooms. Normal hours of operation will continue at all library branch locations and at the county’s Archives facility.
Game (back) on: Sheldon High edges past Dublin
The cancellation of all Elk Grove Unified school activities seemed to end the boys varsity basketball team’s playoff run in the Open Division of the CIF Northern California tournament hosted at the Sheldon Huskies’ home gym.
Then, following the heated protest of parents and conversations involving Elk Grove Unified, county health officials and the CIF, the game was back on. But the Sheldon boys had to travel to Alameda County for a road matchup against Dublin High School.
That drama off the court was followed up by a come-from-behind win on the court. Sheldon fought back from an 8-point deficit in the fourth quarter to beat Dublin High School 59-58, advancing Sheldon — maybe — to Thursday’s Northern California Regional final against Bishop O’Dowd.
School district officials on Tuesday only indicated that events had been cleared through Wednesday, so an official decision has not yet been made whether the show will continue to go on for Sheldon.
If it does, the winner of the Sheldon-Bishop regional title will play for the state championship 8 p.m. Saturday at Golden 1 Center.
Grand Princess: Passenger disembarking takes days
A vacation cruise ship that docked in Oakland midday Monday with a little over 2,400 passengers and 1,100 crew members on board, the Grand Princess is continuing the multi-day task of disembarking all of the passengers for screening and transport to quarantine sites.
Princess Cruises in a statement late Tuesday said the ship had disembarked 1,406 people as of 7 p.m., which leaves a little over 1,000 passengers left to exit the ship.
“Disembarkation is in order of priority, as defined, directed and managed by both federal and state authorities,” Princess said in a news release. “As part of the disembarkation process, Health & Human Services teams have been on board the Grand Princess to assist with medical screenings and interviews and have prioritized those who require the most medical attention and care.”
Federal authorities and the California Office of Emergency Services said in a previous statement that the disembarking would start with patients requiring the most immediate medical attention, then moving on to the cohort of nearly 1,000 Californians on board, followed by offloading non-California residents. Crew members will remain quarantined on the Grand Princess.
California passengers will be taken for mandatory 14-day quarantine at either Travis Air Force Base or Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, near San Diego. Others will be taken to facilities in other states.
State officials announced Tuesday night that up to 24 passengers who disembarked the Grand Princess cruise ship in Oakland will be taken to Asilomar State Beach and Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, about 70 miles southwest of San Jose. These passengers have been screened by medical professionals and are symptomatic.
They have mild symptoms that do not require hospitalization, so they cannot be quarantined at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, state officials said. None of these passengers is known to have contracted COVID-19, but they will be tested and monitored while at Asilomar.
Hotels being used for quarantine, Newsom says
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday announced that patients not sick enough to require hospitalization, but who could be contagious, are being quarantined in hotels in San Mateo and Monterey counties.
The hotels are “100 percent secure, 100 percent segregated from the general public,” Newsom said during a news conference at the Capitol.
Coachella postponed until October
The 2020 Coachella festival, originally scheduled for the weekends of April 10 and April 17 in Indio, will now be held the weekends of Oct. 9 and Oct. 16, the festival’s organizers announced Tuesday.
It is not clear if the festival’s original headliners, Rage Against the Machine, Frank Ocean and Travis Scott, will remain on the lineup.
Miami’s Ultra Music Festival and Austin’s South by Southwest festival were each canceled late last week. Neither moved their festival dates to later in the year like Coachella and Stagecoach.
California numbers updated with age breakdowns
The state Department of Public Health, in the latest update to its webpage, said the state had confirmed 157 positive cases of the coronavirus as of 7 a.m. Tuesday, of which 24 are from repatriation flights. The other 133 include 50 travel-related cases, 30 transmitted from a known coronavirus patient, 29 community-spread cases and 24 cases of unknown origin.
Authorities also released an age breakdown of the 157 cases, which gives broad age ranges for patients. As of Tuesday morning, 91 confirmed cases in California are adults between ages 18 and 64; 60 cases are seniors 65 or older; just two cases involve juveniles age 17 or younger; and in four cases, the ages are unknown.
One of the two known cases involving a California minor is a student at Maeola R. Beitzel Elementary School, county health officials and Elk Grove Unified confirmed in a joint statement earlier this week.
The state health department’s update also includes a map showing which counties have reported “community transmission” (cases for which the infection could not be linked to recent travel or close contact with a known coronavirus patient) as of Monday. Those eight counties are Sacramento, Yolo, Solano, San Francisco, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Riverside.
A map of confirmed coronavirus cases by Johns Hopkins University showed close to 125,000 worldwide as of early Wednesday afternoon. About 81,000 of those cases are in China, where the rate of spread has slowed considerably, while a locked-down Italy has passed 12,000 cases, Iran has hit 9,000 and South Korea closes in on 8,000.
The Johns Hopkins tally shows 1,040 cases in the U.S. as of 7 a.m. Wednesday.
What about air travel? Light rail? DMV lines?
Southwest Airlines has not canceled or suspended any flights as of Wednesday morning. But two other airlines that fly out of Sacramento International Airport, Delta and American, said Tuesday that they will be cutting international flights this summer. Those two airlines don’t fly international directly out of Sacramento, but the decision could affect connecting flights, as The Sacramento Bee reported Wednesday.
Anita Gore, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles, told The Bee that as of this week, coronavirus concerns have not seemed to have an impact on lines. The state is faced with a federal deadline of October, when the current California driver license will no longer be accepted as identification to get on an international flights. Those looking to fly overseas will need either the new Real ID, or a passport, to do so.
Gore said 96,000 customers were served at DMV field offices Monday, on the “high end of normal.”
Sacramento Regional Transit says it has supplied hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes and gloves to employees who deal with the public. SacRT in a press release said it has “been proactive in sanitizing its buses and light rail vehicles every day.”
Bay Area Rapid Transit officials, meanwhile, announced a steep ridership drop, down 25 percent this Monday compared to the one two weeks earlier.
Reminder: What is COVID-19? What are coronavirus symptoms?
Coronavirus is spread through contact between people within six 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 March 11, 2020 at 8:15 AM.
