Coronavirus updates: California to ‘tighten’ restrictions amid surge, Newsom says
Ahead of a major holiday weekend and with numbers surging, Gov. Gavin Newsom says California will tighten its coronavirus restrictions and look to more strictly enforce them, with more specific announcements coming Wednesday.
An ongoing, two-plus-week spike in COVID-19 activity has pushed California’s hospitalization and ICU totals to all-time highs. That includes the capital region, where Sacramento County’s total for confirmed patients in hospital beds has almost tripled in the past 14 days.
Faced with the worsening pandemic, Newsom said during a Tuesday news conference the state will announce multiple changes Wednesday related to the statewide stay-at-home order and its enforcement.
Newsom said it is time to “toggle back on the stay-at-home order and tighten things up” with regard to stay-at-home restrictions, which were loosened across most of the state from mid-May to mid-June after the governor’s initial issuance March 19. He did not provide further details regarding the extent of the incoming restrictions.
State, Sacramento hospitalizations continue rapid surge
The state’s hospitals went from about 3,300 patients with confirmed cases of the potentially deadly respiratory disease on June 15 to more than 5,000 as of the most recent data update, a soaring 52-percent increase in 14 days, state dashboards show.
Sacramento County hospitalizations for COVID-19 have continued to surge, up to 98 patients now in beds, according to state data updated Tuesday. That’s one case shy of triple the 33 that were in hospitals two weeks earlier, and is an increase by 21 from the 77 who were hospitalized just two days ago in Sunday’s update.
A total of 28 patients are now in intensive care across Sacramento County, which currently has an ICU capacity of 80 beds, according to the state. The ICU total is the county’s highest since April 20. At one point during the pandemic’s quietest point so far, in late May, only two patients were in the ICU.
Statewide hospitalizations held mostly steady for the prior two months, with some fluctuations but the figure never surpassing 3,500 patients or dipping below 2,900 at any point between April 13 and June 13.
There are now 1,528 confirmed COVID-19 patients in ICU beds as of the state Department of Public Health’s Tuesday update, up from about 1,050 two weeks earlier.
In 15 days, California hospitals’ intensive care units have gone from about 28 percent to 41 percent full, state data show. Hard-hit Imperial County had 10 patients at a surge facility with 115 total beds ready as of Tuesday’s update; San Mateo County was treating 11 at a surge hospital with the 109 beds available; and Orange County has 10 patients among 50 beds at an alternative care facility, another state dashboard shows.
Concern over those alarming trends can be seen reflected in the state’s watch list, which as of Tuesday morning included 19 counties combining for roughly 30 million of the state’s 40 million residents. Thirteen of those 19 are on the list due to rapidly increasing hospitalization rates.
In his first major rollback of economic reopening that proceeded in stages since mid-May, Newsom on Sunday ordered bars shut down, or stay shut down, in the seven counties that had been on that watch list more than two weeks: Los Angeles, Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Kings, San Joaquin and Tulare. He recommended counties that had been on the watch list more than three days — at that point, Sacramento, Contra Costa, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Stanislaus and Ventura — do the same.
Sacramento County heeded the warning, with health officials announcing Monday afternoon all bars were to close beginning that evening. Even San Diego County, which has not been on the state’s monitoring list, ordered bars, wineries and breweries to close their doors by midnight Tuesday.
Gov. Doug Ducey, of neighboring Arizona, on Monday ordered bars, gyms and a number of recreational businesses, including movie theaters, closed statewide for at least 30 days.
In total, close to 223,000 Californians have tested positive for COVID-19, and at least 5,980 have died statewide, according to Tuesday’s update by the state health department, which added 6,367 for the second-biggest daily increase since the pandemic began. Los Angeles County has surpassed 100,000 confirmed cases, the county says.
More than 31 percent of all cases, 69,000 of them, have come in the past 14 days, the state says.
Newsom and health leaders in the capital region have largely attributed the recent spike to people ignoring social distancing and mask protocols while gathering for private in-person events like birthday and graduation parties.
Contract tracers in Sacramento County linked many such events to Memorial Day weekend at the end of last month; case surges started showing up in the data around two to three weeks later, the approximate incubation period for the virus.
Now, concern mounts as officials hope to rein in weekend celebrations marking the July 4 holiday.
California added to NY, NJ, Connecticut quarantine order
In a tweet, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state now requires 14 days of self-quarantine for any traveler incoming from 16 different states, now expanded to include California.
New Jersey and Connecticut also plan to impose quarantines from those states, most of which are in the South or West, after the tri-state area announced about a week ago that it was setting travel restrictions on areas with surging coronavirus activity.
Sacramento County cases, hospitalizations boom to new highs
Sacramento County health officials on Tuesday added 219 new cases, bringing the county’s all-time infection total to 3,223 after the second straight day of more than 200 cases reported.
The county disclosed a record-shattering 228 new COVID-19 cases Monday morning, shooting the county past 3,000 cases all-time, and reported two more fatalities for 68 since the pandemic began. Before that, no single day had seen new infections increase by more than 154.
The capital city alone, where roughly one-third of the county’s 1.5 million residents live, now accounts for more than 1,900 confirmed cases and 33 deaths, according to the county dashboard.
State data show the county also jumped from 77 hospitalized Sunday to 87 Monday. Sunday’s total of 77 tied a high not reached since early April.
Sorted by “episode date,” which denotes the earliest known day to which health officials can track the onset of the virus, the county dashboard now shows 945 infections have emerged in a recent 11-day window, from June 15-25. Those days make up more than 31 percent of the county’s all-time infection total.
The health dashboard classifies 1,657 of the 3,004 all-time cases as “likely recovered.” Subtracting the 68 fatalities, that suggests approximately 1,279 infections can be considered active across Sacramento County. Less than two weeks ago, that figure was around 500.
“No parades, no barbecues,” he said. “We are imploring people not to gather this weekend.”
Beilenson also gave a grim warning: “The next two to three weeks will tell the tale whether we can turn this around or not.
“Now, we are getting to the point where it becomes more and more common that someone you are exposed to has the virus, and that you get it as well.”
Outbreak kills 2, infects more than 50 at Lodi nursing home
Arbor Nursing Center, a skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility in Lodi, has suffered an outbreak in which 36 residents and 16 staff have tested positive for COVID-19, according to Arbor’s website. Two of the infected residents died as of Monday.
The nursing home has 149 licensed beds, according to the state Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development website.
Arbor says it is conducting facility-wide testing for all residents and staff, and that it has designated separate wings for residents who tested positive.
San Joaquin County reports on its COVID-19 dashboard it has experienced nine skilled nursing facility outbreaks and four more in congregate care facilities. As of a Monday update, the county reported more than 1,150 new cases in the preceding 14 days and 129 currently hospitalized with the virus. Both figures represent more than six times higher than the upper limits the county set in self-attesting its reopening plan with the state, according to the dashboard. The county has reported close to 3,300 infections and 52 total deaths to date.
Arbor is one of more than 30 facilities operated by a Southern California-based company called Covenant Care, which houses a total of more than 4,000 residents.
Covenant also runs Courtyard Healthcare Center in Davis, where two residents and one staff member have been infected among 216 total tests conducted, according to Yolo County’s health department.
Testing capacity increasing, but not full reason for case spike
State health officials now report California has conducted more than 4 million diagnostic tests for COVID-19, on Monday announcing the second day so far with more than 100,000 tests performed.
While testing is undoubtedly critical for state and local governments to respond to the pandemic, increasing test totals alone do not account for the recent boost in positive cases across California. The state reported Monday that the current test positivity rate is 5.5 percent, based on a rolling 14-day average, up nearly 1 full point from 4.6 percent two weeks earlier.
That figure is one main indicator of the true spread of the virus now that tests are more widely available. As the state approached one of Newsom’s earlier goals, of 60,000 tests per day, the rate bottomed out around 4.1 percent in late May. Its rise, despite testing capacity climbing at a fairly steady rise, reflects that the virus is indeed spreading faster than it was a month ago.
The World Health Organization has recommended a rate of below 5 percent before economic reopening, while the state of California lists its goal as less than 8 percent. A positive test rate above 8 percent will land a county on the state watch list.
Sacramento County’s positive test rate, for all of the more than 102,000 tests conducted since March 1, stands historically at 3.1 percent, according to newly released data from the county.
But looking at the rolling seven-day average, the positive rate climbed up to 5.4 percent for the week ending June 27, which as an individual day saw 7.2 percent of tests come back positive, the highest of any one day since April 12. The rolling weekly average had been at 2 percent as recently as June 16 before the recent spike hit, and it had stayed at or below that mark dating back to early May. Sacramento County hit a weekly high of 7.1 percent positive tests April 7 to April 13.
Newsom signs budget addressing pandemic deficit, recession
Newsom on Monday signed a $202 billion budget that includes funds to address the pandemic emergency and related unemployment surge, while cutting billions of dollars from other sectors due to the recession.
The budget will take effect Wednesday, the start of the new fiscal year. It assumed a $54 billion deficit due to COVID-19 and the impact of Newsom’s stay-at-home order on the economy.
The budget allows for $716 million in emergency pandemic spending, less than the nearly $3 billion Newsom proposed, and authorizes up to seven extra weeks of emergency unemployment benefits.
The 2020-21 budget also gives Newsom power to withhold $2.5 billion from cities and counties if they do not follow his administration’s COVID-19 rules designed to slow spread of the virus, including his statewide mask mandate that went into effect in mid-June.
Caltrans, Sacramento County workers among recently infected
Two days after Sacramento County let close to 3,000 nonessential workers back in their offices, one employee returning to work at a county building has tested positive for the coronavirus.
An employee had been at south Sacramento’s Department of Human Assistance building Wednesday, and the county was notified of the positive test result Friday, county officials said.
Last week, Sacramento County ended paid administrative leave for the roughly 2,800 employees who had had access to it since March.
Meanwhile, at least 10 state road workers throughout at least nine Caltrans maintenance stations in California, mostly near the Bay Area and Los Angeles, tested positive for COVID-19 between June 16 and June 28, according to notices to employees.
The union representing the workers filed a grievance over the infections on Monday.
Latest Sacramento-area numbers: 4,600 cases, 103 fatalities
The four-county capital region has surpassed 4,600 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the roughly four months it has been spreading. Of those, 103 have died.
Sacramento County has reported 3,223 total infections and 68 fatalities from the disease, last updated Tuesday morning. Over 1,900 of those cases have come within capital city limits, according to the county dashboard. County health officials estimate 1,657 cases as “likely recovered,” which means there are now roughly 1,500 active cases in Sacramento County.
Yolo County has seen 526 infections and 24 deaths, reporting 25 new confirmed cases Tuesday following 23 on Monday, 21 on Sunday and 20 on Saturday. Last Tuesday, county health officials reported a record-setting day of 26 new infections. Seventeen of the 24 fatalities have come at Stollwood Convalescent Hospital in Woodland, the site of an outbreak first reported in April.
Placer County now reports 684 infections and 11 total deaths, last updated Tuesday morning with 41 new cases. That figure is by far the highest one-day increase for the county, having previously recorded 28 new infections June 18. Two deaths were reported last week after about a month with none. Placer had 10 confirmed cases in the hospital, with four of them in the ICU, as of the most recent update. The state’s data dashboard, however, as of Tuesday morning showed 13 hospitalized and four in the ICU Placer County.
El Dorado County has kept its numbers low, but as of Tuesday, 184 people have tested positive for the virus, and one person was being treated in an intensive care unit for COVID-19. No one has died from the virus there. The county on Monday reported 20 new COVID-19 cases that had accumulated over the weekend. On Tuesday afternoon, the county reported six new cases. Slightly more than half of all cases stem from the Lake Tahoe region.
Sutter County as of Monday had a total of 176 coronavirus cases and three deaths. The county on Monday reported 16 new cases from over the weekend. Yuba County, which has a case total of 71 and one death, reported six new cases Monday.
World numbers: 510,000 dead, more than 25 percent in US
Close to 510,000 people have now died of COVID-19 worldwide among 10.4 million confirmed cases, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. accounted for more than one-quarter of each total as of Tuesday afternoon, showing over 127,000 deaths and more than 2.6 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins.
Within the U.S., the pandemic’s previous epicenter of New York state reports over 32,000 deaths, though fatalities have slowed significantly since the mid-spring outbreak there. Another 15,000 have died in New Jersey.
Five other states now report between 5,000 and 10,000 dead, according to Johns Hopkins: Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan and California.
Following the United States, the pandemic has been most severe in Brazil, where over 59,000 have died among more than 1.4 million confirmed infections. Italy, another previous epicenter, has reported nearly 35,000 dead; almost 30,000 have died from the disease in France; Spain reports 28,000 fatalities; and more than 27,000 have died from COVID-19 in Mexico.
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.
Sacramento Bee reporters Rosalio Ahumada, Tony Bizjak, Sophia Bollag, Benjy Egel, Wes Venteicher and Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks contributed to this report. Listen to our daily briefing:
