Bay Area News Group: Coronavirus: More Than 2,000 Deaths Reported In California
California on Thursday reached more grim milestones in the continuing coronavirus pandemic, surpassing 2,000 confirmed deaths and 50,000 confirmed cases on the same day, according to data complied by this news organization. The state recorded 89 new deaths, bringing the total to 2,032. The data shows 55 of the deaths were reported in Los Angeles County, the COVID-19 epicenter of California. But the Bay Area was not spared – four deaths were logged in Santa Clara County, three in Alameda County, two in Contra Costa County and two in San Francisco County. (Green, 4/30)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area's New Shelter-In-Place Order: Rules Relaxed For Some Outdoor Businesses, Activities
Public health officials in six Bay Area counties and the city of Berkeley released new health orders Wednesday extending mandates to shelter in place through May 31, while relaxing restrictions around some outdoor businesses and recreation activities. The orders were developed and handed down jointly by public health officers in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties and Berkeley, which has its own health department. The new orders will take effect Monday, the day existing shelter-in-place mandates would have expired. (Fracassa, 4/30)

San Francisco Chronicle: California To Rework Coronavirus Ethics Guidelines Deemed ‘Terrifying’ 
California’s public health officials will rework ethical guidelines for hospitals issued in April after groups representing thousands of seniors and people with disabilities across the country protested that younger, healthier people would get preferential access to lifesaving care in a worst-case coronavirus surge. More than 60 senior and disability rights organizations sent two letters last week to Gov. Gavin Newsom and Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, arguing that the April 19 guidelines would discriminate against the elderly and disabled if resources ran low. (Moench, 4/30)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Company Receives FDA Nod For Coronavirus Antibody Test 
A Hercules company has received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for an antibody test that could help determine who has been infected by the coronavirus. Bio-Rad Laboratories is the first Bay Area company to receive such an authorization for an antibody test from the FDA, according to the agency’s website. Nine antibody tests have been granted similar authorizations. In a letter to Bio-Rad, the FDA said emergency use of its test is “limited to authorized laboratories.” (Kawahara, 4/30)

Bay Area News Group: COVID-19: South Bay Cities Ask County To Beef Up Testing
A consortium of South Bay city leaders are asking Santa Clara County officials to step up COVID-19 testing and contract tracing so schools and the economy can safely reopen, but the county executive cautioned against the idea of quick fixes, saying that addressing the pandemic will take “two to three years.” In a letter from the Cities Association of Santa Clara County, mayors and councilmembers of all 15 cities in the county requested “accelerated action to ramp up testing” from the county Board of Supervisors, Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody and County Executive Jeff Smith. (Geha, 4/30)

San Francisco Chronicle: Protesters Hold ‘Die-In’ Outside Mayor Breed’s Home Over Hotel Rooms For Homeless 
People lay flat on their backs in the street, held hand-made signs and chanted on Thursday night in front of San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s apartment as part of a “die-in” rally to decry a shortage of hotel rooms to support the homeless during the pandemic. Physicians, homeless residents and members of Faith in Action, the Coalition on Homelessness and Do No Harm Coalition organized the event after San Francisco failed to meet a Sunday deadline — set by the Board of Supervisors — to secure more than 8,000 hotel rooms for vulnerable people. (Bauman, 4/30)

Sacramento Bee: Are More Homeless In Downtown Sacramento Amid Coronavirus?
The coronavirus pandemic closed restaurants and bars, shut down Golden 1 Center and sent state employees home with laptops in town. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Sacramento residents didn’t notice as the downtown homeless population shot up nearly 50 percent. (Egel and Clift, 5/1)

Sacramento Bee: California Capitol Targeted For Protest Over Stay-At-Home Orders 
As California Gov. Gavin Newsom continues to fight coronavirus spread through orders limiting public movements and closing some state beaches, push back is growing from various quarters seeking a reopening of churches, business and public gatherings. A week after the California Highway Patrol banned public protests at the state Capitol and other state properties, a demonstration is expected at noon Friday around the downtown Sacramento building by people demanding the state reopen despite the threat from COVID-19. (Stanton, 4/30)

Los Angeles Times: Coronavirus: Rural California Demands To Reopen As Newsom Urges Patience
For Bob Williams, the chairman of Tehama County’s Board of Supervisors, the numbers don’t justify the reality. The rural Northern California community of 65,000 has had only one case of the coronavirus, but it continues to face the same restrictions from the state as denser cities such as Los Angeles, which has had more than 23,000 cases. That’s why Williams has joined elected officials from the Central Coast, Central Valley, Northern California and elsewhere who have asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to let them gradually lift their stay-at-home order. (Miller, 5/1)

Sacramento Bee: Coronavirus: How California Counties Handle Stay-Home Orders 
Shelter in place. Stay well at home... These phrases have been heard all around California as the state works to slow the spread of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. As Gov. Gavin Newsom moves toward reopening California and eventually lifting the weeks-long, statewide stay-at-home order, the state’s 58 counties and their health officers are working to tailor the order to their unique needs. (Smith, 5/1)

MedPage Today: Baja Border An 'Achilles Heel' For COVID-19 Control
With counts of COVID-19 patients now rising rapidly just north of California's border with Mexico, hospital executives here are asking federal officials to move "immediately" to screen the tens of thousands of people crossing every day from densely populated Tijuana, a city of 2 million people, and other parts of the Baja peninsula. Chief executives of two major California healthcare systems sent a sent a letter late Tuesday to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. They worry their systems will be overrun, not only from local San Diego cases, but from people who traverse the border unknowingly bringing the virus with them. (Clark, 4/29)

San Francisco Chronicle: Antioch Official May Be Fired After Facebook Post Suggests Coronavirus Deaths Can Help Society 
Antioch City Council will meet in a special session Friday to discuss removing an official who called for an end to shelter in place in a social media post, suggesting “we as a species need to move forward with our place on Earth” and should let the coronavirus kill older and weaker individuals. Mayor Sean Wright said that city officials and residents have questioned the ability of Planning Commission Chair Ken Turnage II. Wright said he called for the special meeting after Turnage refused to resign. (Serrano, 4/30)

San Francisco Chronicle: How A UCSF Lab Took On The Global Race To Block The Coronavirus 
In late February, the virus expert Nevan Krogan called an early morning meeting at his UCSF lab in Mission Bay and told 20 fellow scientists that their lives were about to change. The new coronavirus, which emerged in China, was now spreading from person to person in California. Health authorities had just confirmed it. Soon the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 would be everywhere, Krogan realized, and many were bound to die. (Fagone, 5/1)

Sacramento Bee: Mass Layoffs In CA Continue After COVID-19 Shutters Economy 
The COVID-19 layoffs keep coming, weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home order effectively closed most of California’s economy. Hundreds of Sacramento-area workers were part of mass layoffs at their jobs in recent weeks, according to a review of the WARN Act notices filed with the state in April. The public mass-layoff notices, required by law, provide yet another glimpse of how much the area’s economy has suffered since the coronavirus pandemic struck. (Kasler and Finch II, 4/30)

Los Angeles Times: Coronavirus: Fed Up L.A. Tenants Try Rent Strike, Disobedience
Chris Tyler lost his job at a restaurant on March 15 — the same day Mayor Eric Garcetti banned sit-down food service to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus in Los Angeles. A couple of weeks later, he and his partner decided not to pay rent for the one-bedroom apartment they share in Silver Lake. “It’s a decision that I have made personally that is both political and very much out of necessity,” said Tyler, 31. “I don’t think it’s an unreasonable choice to make in the middle of a global pandemic.” (Dillon, 5/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: High-Powered Bay Area Group Aims To Outdo DC In Coronavirus Help For Small Business 
Deanna Sison employed 30 people at her two San Francisco restaurants and a bar before the coronavirus pandemic struck. Now she employs four, only one establishment remains open, and she’s frustrated by the byzantine application process to obtain federal relief that was supposed to help small businesses like hers survive. Sison received a federal loan for her bar but can’t spend most of it because it is earmarked for payroll — for a staff that is unneeded until customers return. (Garofoli, 4/30)

Fresno Bee: Tulare County Has 4 New Coronavirus Deaths, More Fresno Cases
Four more people have died in Tulare County from complications of the coronavirus, bringing the total number of deaths in the county to 40. Tulare County now accounts for more than three-fourths of the 53 deaths in the central San Joaquin Valley. Fresno County also added 26 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, bringing its total COVID-19 cases up to 564. Fresno County COVID-19 deaths remain at seven. Of Fresno County’s cases, 351 are active and 206 have recovered, health officials said. (Tehee, 4/30)

Los Angeles Times: Coronavirus Hinders California Air Pollution Enforcement
The coronavirus is having another unintended effect on California’s environment, hindering the enforcement of clean-air rules that could help protect people’s lungs during the pandemic. Field inspections have been halted since mid-March at the California Air Resources Board, which enforces rules on trucks, ships and other major pollution sources, because of health concerns about in-person investigations. (Barboza, 5/1)

Los Angeles Times: Coronavirus: Nurse Died From COVID-19 After Care Home Ordered Her To Admit Sick Man
When Brittany Bruner-Ringo, a nurse at an upscale dementia care center on Los Angeles’ Westside, phoned her mother in Oklahoma in mid-March, she was uncharacteristically rattled and looking for advice. Her supervisors at Silverado Beverly Place had instructed her to admit a new resident, a retired doctor flown in from New York City, despite the fact that the facility was under lockdown to prevent the sort of COVID-19 outbreaks that were cropping up in the man’s hometown. (Ryan, 5/1)

Bay Area News Group: Coronavirus: New Order Allows Californians To Obtain Marriage Licenses Via Videoconference
Californians looking to tie the knot in the time of COVID-19 can now obtain a marriage license via videoconference, according to a new executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom. Signed on Thursday, the order allows couples to obtain a license at the discretion of their county clerk as long as both parties are located in the state, are present and can provide identification during the videoconference. The license can then be issued via email. (Green, 4/30)

San Francisco Chronicle: Newsom Should Remove Mask From Secretive Coronavirus Spending
With assertive and generally effective management of the coronavirus crisis, Gov. Gavin Newsom has in many respects “met the moment,” to use an overused Newsomism. While his expansive emergency powers and success so far might allow him to ignore boundaries observed in less extraordinary times, he should resist the temptation lest his accumulated goodwill prove, well, momentary.The governor’s billion-dollar contract for protective masks from Chinese automaker BYD, which has a plant in Southern California, is a case in point. (5/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: Gov. Newsom, Don’t Give Legal Immunity To Nursing Homes Over Coronavirus 
Rampant coronavirus cases at nursing homes throughout the country have put an intense focus on the way these health care facilities do business, and people are asking if everything was done to adequately protect residents. The answer is a resounding no. Nursing-home operators are aware of the neglect. While the very seniors they are supposed to protect lay dying, the nursing-home industry is knocking on doors in Sacramento looking for immunity to protect itself from liability. (Niall McCarthy, 4/29)

Los Angeles Times: Sorry, Orange County. No Beach Weekend For You
Gov. Gavin Newsom surprised many Thursday when he declined to order all state beaches and parks to close, contrary to a plan laid out in a widely circulated memo. Instead, he said the order would apply only to Orange County, where some beaches were crowded during last weekend’s heatwave. They will remain closed until local officials figure out how to safely manage beachgoers. (5/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: The Clash Over Shelter-In-Place Rooted In Slavery
The frightening demonstrations occurring outside state capitol buildings across the country in which right-wing hardliners are demanding governors lift shelter-in-place orders present a danger that goes far beyond immediate public health concerns. What we’re witnessing in fact threatens to dissolve whatever social cohesion we’ve managed to maintain as a country and ignite a new civil war over who we are as a nation, and who belongs in it. (John A. Powell, 5/1)

Sacramento Bee: Newsom’s Botched Sacramento Kings Announcement Reveals Trend 
When Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sacramento Kings CEO Vivek Ranadivé stood on the floor of Sleep Train Arena on April 6, their words seemed to give a clear impression: The NBA team was making a big philanthropic contribution to California. Newsom thanked the team for donating 100,000 masks, supporting food banks and providing cash donations to help people in need. Newsom also profusely thanked Ranadivé for having “offered” the Sleep Train arena facility – the former home of the Kings – “before we even asked.” (4/29)

Los Angeles Times: How Cedars-Sinai Got Sucked Into The Battle Over Trump’s Claim Of A COVID-19 Treatment
The headline assertion made by President Trump at his April 23 coronavirus press briefing was about injecting disinfectants to kill the virus, a statement that prompted public health authorities and disinfectant makers to warn against doing so. But Trump talked about a second potential treatment at that briefing — bringing a “very powerful light” inside the body to kill the virus. “The whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s — that’s pretty powerful,” he said. (Michael Hiltzik, 5/1)

Los Angeles Times: Why It's Risky To Promise A Coronavirus Vaccine And Cure
A surge of optimism has followed each recent announcement about possible cures and vaccines for COVID-19, including this week’s disclosure of a treatment that was first developed for the Ebola virus. But there is a price to pay for promising too much as the economy reels and the world anxiously awaits even a marginally effective therapeutic. Some promising announcements have been followed by reality checks, further muddling the picture about which ones will come to the rescue. (Ralph Vartabedian, 5/1)

CalMatters: Frontline Workers Need PPE To Keep Saving Lives In Battle Against COVID-19 
If there is anything worse than an emergency room crowded with sick COVID-19 patients, it’s an emergency room crowded with doctors, nurses and essential hospital staff too sick to care for them. California must take immediate and aggressive action to keep health care and other frontline workers safe or that nightmare scenario could very well become our reality. (John Pearson, 4/25)

Los Angeles Times: 'Every Country For Itself' Won't Stop Global Coronavirus Crisis
Has there ever been a crisis as truly global as this one? If I email with my cousin Susanne outside Vienna, she’s locked in her house, avoiding the virus. So is my old colleague, Said, who is at home in his apartment in East Jerusalem. So was Luly in Beijing, until a few weeks ago when restrictions there were eased. This microscopic virus knows no national borders. And it kills indiscriminately — Italians as well as Iranians, Americans as well as Russians. (Nicholas Goldberg, 5/1)

Bay Area News Group: Coronavirus Transforming Mental Health Therapy Sessions
The coronavirus is transforming mental health treatment for the better for clients like me. We have been generously informed about the distance learning that is done for students during the shelter in place prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, but there hasn’t been much coverage concerning how the same idea is being applied to psychotherapy. (Jack Bragen, 4/28)

Bay Area News Group: Nonprofits Are Essential Partner In Pandemic Response
When our community-based nonprofit Meals on Wheels program began to see rising demand for our services as Santa Clara County issued a shelter in place order, we had to scramble. Many of our usual Meals on Wheels drivers had to shelter in place themselves, just when the phones started ringing off the hook with new client inquiries. (Michele Lew, 4/28)

CalMatters: State Leader Wants To Smartly Reopen California’s Economy 
The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been devastating, and California must continue to act decisively to help mitigate the damage. As a California state senator representing the 8th Senate District, I have learned heartbreaking stories from employees and business owners who are seeing their dreams and investments dismantled. If lucky enough to have employment, many working parents are forced to juggle work with the new demands of homeschooling, often while vulnerable elderly fend for themselves in solitude. As a father of two school-aged children with elderly parents, this hits close to home. (State Sen. Andreas Borgeas, 4/28)

CalMatters: Coronavirus Cost Me My Job; Without Rent Forgiveness, It Will Cost Me My Home 
It was a few weeks into the coronavirus pandemic when I got the call from my boss. I could tell from the sound of her voice what I was about to hear: She had no choice but to let me go. Just like that, I’d lost my job — a job I loved, that I did well, and that I needed to feed my two kids and pay my rent. (Patricia Mendoza, 5/1)

Fresno Bee: Fresno Mayor Has Right Strategy To Fight Coronavirus 
On Monday a Fresno City Council member decried how small businesses remain closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the city’s shelter in place order. Later that day the central San Joaquin Valley set a daily record for new cases of the disease. On Tuesday a different Fresno council member railed against the city’s sheltering order, also saying how small businesses and the economy are getting unfairly harmed... Later Tuesday the region marked another daily record for number of cases, and Fresno County went over the 500-case mark since COVID-19 infections began. (4/30)