Coronavirus updates: Mass unemployment claims as California passes 11,000 infected
Californians as a whole have done a good job social distancing, government officials say with some data backing that up, but the extent and duration for which the coronavirus pandemic will continue its extreme disruption of normal life is still largely uncertain.
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in California has now surpassed 11,000 with at least 242 deaths, according to a Sacramento Bee survey count of figures released by county health departments as of Thursday night. More than 1 million have tested positive for the virus worldwide.
Thursday marks two weeks since Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a mandatory stay-at-home order for all of California’s nearly 40 million residents, banning them from leaving home except for essential reasons like buying groceries and supplies, or working at a job in an industry deemed essential.
Because coronavirus symptoms can begin anywhere from about two to 14 days after exposure, the state is entering a window in which experts can get a better look at the impact the stay-at-home order had on infection totals.
California was the nation’s first state to implement the unprecedented mitigation effort on a statewide level, a drastic effort Newsom and other leaders say is necessary to “flatten” the infection curve and keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.
“Throughout California, counties are doing an amazing job” at social distancing, state Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said in a Wednesday news conference. “People are doing an incredible job.”
Part of that incredible job means public life has come to a halt. Newsom on Wednesday said public school campuses will not reopen this academic year. Events and gatherings of virtually all forms have been canceled, some of which had been planned to start as late as midsummer.
Still, the highly contagious virus, which causes the disease COVID-19, has continued its rapid spread in California, throughout the U.S. and across most of the world.
As of Thursday night, more than 1 million people worldwide have been infected, according to a map by Johns Hopkins University, and more than 53,000 have died. Almost a quarter of the total cases, at more than 245,000, and nearly 6,000 deaths have come in the United States.
Newsom said Wednesday that of 8,155 COVID-19 cases confirmed as of Tuesday, more than 1,850 were hospitalized.
California unemployment explodes, nearly 900,000 claims
Unemployment claims in California erupted again last week, to an estimated 878,727, a massive explosion in claims far greater than the national percentage increase, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday.
Nationwide, more than 6.6 million people filed for the first time in the week that ended Saturday. The seasonally adjusted figure, an all-time high, was double the previous week’s total.
California’s latest number, which is not seasonally adjusted, was far higher than the previous week’s 186,333 jobless claims and the 57,606 of two weeks ago.
Newsom describes ‘Phase Two’ of coronavirus response
Speaking at a daily news conference by state leaders Wednesday, Newsom said that some figures he’s recently referenced — California’s need for 50,000 more hospital beds, 10,000 more ventilators and tens of millions more masks by mid-May to battle coronavirus — represent just “Phase One” of the coronavirus response.
Phase Two, which could start in late May or June, is projected to see surge capacity of hospital beds increase from 50,000 to 66,000, on top of the state’s pre-coronavirus capacity of about 75,000. The need for ventilators, of which the state has so far obtained 4,200, may grow to 30,000 in Phase Two, the governor said.
As of midday Wednesday, more than 1,800 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, Newsom said. About 774 of those were in intensive care units.
The University of California and California State University systems both have identified a combined total of more than 5,000 beds for Phase Two, Newsom said.
Absent any mitigation efforts, more than 700,000 COVID-19 patients could have flooded California hospitals at once, nearly 10 times more than the system could handle, Newsom’s top health official Dr. Mark Ghaly said during Wednesday’s news conference.
At one point in March, Newsom suggested that the statewide stay-at-home mandate could last at least 12 more weeks, which at that point would have marked mid-June. Newsom, Ghaly and other state health officials have made it clear that the projections and modeling they are working with is dynamic, changing by the day.
Sacramento’s Broadway at Music Circus postponed
Broadway at Music Circus has postponed its 2020 summer season for the first time, citing uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus.
Broadway Sacramento President and CEO Richard Lewis announced the postponement Thursday in a news release which cited concerns over the safety of employees and patrons due to the spread of COVID-19, caused by the coronavirus.
This year’s canceled shows include retellings of classics such as “Kinky Boots,” Monty Python’s “Spamalot” and “The Color Purple.” The shows will be moved to the summer of 2021.
The 70-year-old series of summer shows has often featured veterans of Broadway, film and television.
Single-show tickets had yet to go on sale for Broadway at Music Circus, but Lewis stated those who had purchased season tickets would have the opportunity to transfer them to the 2021 season, which is set to begin June 8.
First death in Solano County
Solano County reported its first death due to complications from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus. Public health officials announced Thursday afternoon that the Solano County resident who died was at least 85 years old, had recently traveled out of the country and had multiple severe underlying health conditions.
Officials did not release the person’s name, age, gender or city of residence. Health Officer Bela Matyas offered condolences to the person’s family. On Thursday afternoon, there were 61 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Solano County; more than two-thirds of the cases were people 19 to 64 years, and nearly one third of the cases were people 65 or older.
“We strongly recommend that all Solano County residents, workers, students, and visitors take the necessary precautions to protect themselves against the novel coronavirus,” Matyas said in a news release.
Navy hospital ships treating few patients in California, New York
The Navy’s two hospital ships have begun to see patients, but so far the numbers are small, the commanding officers of both vessels told reporters Thursday at a Pentagon briefing.
As of Thursday, the Mercy, which is docked in Los Angeles, had treated 15 patients and had been able to release five of them, said Mercy commanding officer Navy Capt. John Rotruck. The Comfort, which began receiving patients Wednesday in New York City, has so far taken three aboard for treatment, said Capt. Patrick Amersbach.
Both expect their caseloads to rise as local hospitals transfer additional patients to the ships.
California to date has been able to slow the trajectory of new cases, and if it became apparent the state’s hospital system and number of beds are adequate, the Mercy could be quickly redirected by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to another U.S. city that may be facing a surge, Rotruck said.
“Relocating for us would be just providing a safe disposition for all the patients that are currently onboard the ship, and once we accomplished that, we could leave in fairly short order,” Rotruck said.
The ships are configured to treat noncoronavirus ailments, and each patient is screened for the virus before being transferred to the ship. At a White House briefing Wednesday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the ships could be used to treat coronavirus cases.
Rotruck said if the Mercy is asked to take coronavirus cases, it could, but it would “probably have to transfer non-(COVID-19) off the ship.”
Churches must shut down in-person gatherings, health official says
Sacramento County public health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson on Wednesday revealed a troubling discovery: About one-third of the county’s 314 confirmed COVID-19 cases have been linked to recent church gatherings.
“We want to make it absolutely clear to churches in the community they really have to shut down their gatherings, services, and prayer groups,” Beilenson said. “We have a problem with a couple of churches that have had their prayer groups still meeting.”
Most churches have halted Sunday services since Sacramento County officials issued a shelter-in-place order on March 19, hours before Newsom’s similar order at the state level. The county order called for residents to practice social distancing, to shelter in their homes and to refrain from group gatherings of any significant size.
But Beilenson noted that one church in the county, which he declined to name, has had 24 positive cases of the coronavirus spread among its congregants as they continue in-person fellowship meetings. Another church, Faith Presbyterian Church in Sacramento, has had two parishioners die from the virus and a total of five people test positive for the virus. Church officials note that they halted in-person church services after March 8 and fully shut down their buildings on March 12, a full week before Newsom’s statewide order.
City of Sacramento observes relatively high per-capita death rate
Sacramento County on Wednesday released a city-by-city breakdown of confirmed COVID-19 cases and coronavirus deaths, giving those numbers for the first time.
The recent data show that while the county as a whole had infection and death rates that were nearly identical to those of California statewide on a per-capita basis, all of the county’s nine deaths as of Wednesday came in the cities of Sacramento and Elk Grove, where there have been six and three fatalities reported, respectively.
As a result, given Sacramento’s population of about 500,000 and Elk Grove’s of just over 170,000, the cities had rates of 1.2 and 1.7 deaths per 100,000 people, respectively. Each figure was well over California’s overall per-capita death rate of 0.5 as of the same time. Sacramento’s death rate was nearly double that of Los Angeles County (about 0.64), where the death total of 65 is the state’s highest but spread out over more than 10 million Californians.
In a pandemic, per capita rates change quickly and are not an indication of growth, but give a snapshot of where the disease is right now.
The recent Sacramento data can be misleading for a few reasons. One is small sample size: with Sacramento’s death total of just six deaths and Elk Grove’s even smaller at three, it may not be entirely fair to compare rates of either with that of California as a whole, where about 215 have died.
Also, differences in infection and death rate numbers in different areas could be reflective of differences in testing for the virus, which jurisdictions around the U.S. and within California are scrambling to improve in terms of speed and availability, with varying results.
It should also be noted that as an urban center with a denser population than much of the state, one would expect Sacramento to have higher infection and death rates compared with more suburban or rural parts of California.
12 new cases in Placer County, 27 more in Sacramento
Placer County in a Thursday morning update said there have now been 90 confirmed COVID-19 cases reported there, with the death toll remaining at two.
Sacramento County also updated its total to 341 infections as of Thursday morning, and is still at nine deaths.
Sacramento’s four-county region has reached a dozen fatalities total is approaching 500 reported cases. In addition to Placer and Sacramento, Yolo County has confirmed 28 cases and one death; and El Dorado County has had 18 cases with no fatalities yet reported.
New rules: Stop using reusable bags, board bus from the back
Some California grocery stores, including in the Sacramento area, are asking customers not to bring in their reusable bags, despite the recent statewide ban on single-use plastic bags.
Stores are doing so in hopes of protecting their employees from contracting the coronavirus, asking workers only to handle paper bags and heavy plastic bags provided by the stores. This would also ideally reduce the chances of a store employee from potentially spreading the virus from one shopper to another.
“We’re doing everything we can to keep our stores sanitized and safe,” said Ron Fong, president and CEO of the California Grocers Association.
Fong said that grocery store employees have no way of knowing whether a person has sterilized their bags in between uses, “because there’s no way to police that.”
Better yet, if the shopping trip is a relatively light one, why use bags at all? Fong said customers are not required to use bags and can simply put their items back in the cart and transport them directly to their vehicle.
“That’s actually preferable to us,” he said.
Separately, Sacramento Regional Transit officials announced Wednesday that bus riders must now enter through the rear doors, except for those who require ramps to enter, use mobility devices or need priority seating.
RT is installing a plexiglass barrier on each bus to protect drivers and will add detachable chain barriers above the white line to further reduce exposure.
Officials said bus riders who pay with cash or with a paper ticket can pay their fare by depositing it in a metal box above the front wheel-well. They can then pick up a paper daily pass or transfer near the metal box after paying.
Fauci honored with bobblehead
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the renowned immunologist shepherding the nation through the COVID-19 pandemic, will be getting his image on a bobblehead figure, according to a Thursday announcement by the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum.
Phil Sklar, the hall’s co-founder and chief executive officer, said he received a number of requests from Americans to recognize 79-year-old Fauci with a bobblehead.
Fauci, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2008, has called upon all Americans to adopt social distancing measures that will help “flatten the curve,” or reduce the expected surge of COVID-19 cases. He headed up the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases head of the NIAID since 1984. An adviser to six U.S. presidents, Fauci is leading the Trump Administration’s efforts to monitor, contain, and mitigate the spread of the virus.
He is not universally beloved, however, as witnessed by the death threats he’s received from people who have accused him of trying to undermine President Donald Trump.
Latest world coronavirus numbers: Over 1 million cases
The global total of confirmed COVID-19 infections has surpassed 1 million as of midday Thursday.
The United States remains the country with the highest volume of infections, with more than 236,000 confirmed, according to Johns Hopkins data. Italy and Spain are next, with 115,000 and 110,000, respectively. Italy has reported more than 13,000 fatalities while 10,000 have been reported in Spain. Just over 49,000 have died worldwide.
Reported death and infection rates have stalled in China at about 82,000 cases and 3,400 deaths. France has reported over 4,500 fatalities among 60,000 infections. Iran and the United Kingdom have each seen roughly 3,000 deaths.
In the United States, New York state and within it New York City remain major epicenters for the coronavirus. More than 92,000 have been infected and 2,300-plus have died in the state, with almost 1,400 of those deaths in New York City.
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 April 2, 2020 at 11:17 AM with the headline "Coronavirus updates: Mass unemployment claims as California passes 11,000 infected."
