Latest California Healthline Stories
Daily Edition for Friday, April 3, 2020
As Death Toll In LA Climbs To 78, Officials Warn It Could Be Weeks Before Seeing Signs Virus Is Slowing: Although cases are rising across the state, Los Angeles County — the state’s most populous — has seen a large number of fatalities and new cases. Officials acknowledged the psychological toll of the losses but said it’s essential people keep following social distancing rules and follow health guidelines. “Please don’t lose hope, and please don’t stop following all of the directives that you are following right now to slow the spread of COVID-19,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues its march across California, the number of cases in the state swelled to more than 11,000 on Thursday — with the death toll topping 240. Of those cases, 40% have occurred in L.A. County. Read more from Hannah Fry, John Myers and Paige St. John of the Los Angeles Times.
Daily Edition for Thursday, April 2, 2020
California’s Coronavirus Cases Barrels Toward 10,000; Number Of ICU Patients Quadruples In Six Days: California is closing in on 10,000 confirmed cases with the state’s death total topping 200. Gov. Gavin Newsom focused in particular on the number of patients being treated in ICUs. Newsom opened a news conference Wednesday by stating a single number — “774” — because, he said, the number of people in ICU beds remains his focus, along with the number of people hospitalized in the state for COVID-19 (1855 people, roughly triple the figure from six days ago). “That’s the number I wake up to that I am most focused on as governor of the state California,” Newsom said. “Those numbers represent our most urgent need in terms of keeping people alive and keeping people healthy and safe in the state of California. Newsom and his top health official have talked for more than a week about California’s need for 50,000 more hospital beds, 10,000 more ventilators and tens of millions more masks to battle coronavirus. On Wednesday, they revealed those numbers are just “Phase One.” “If you extrapolate that out… we’ll exceed that Phase One surge capacity of 50,000 (beds) somewhere in the middle part of May,” he said. Read more from the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Daily Edition for Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Newsom Warns Against Complacency: ‘The Only Regret We Will Have Is If People Cut The Parachute Before We Land’: Some evidence now suggests that California’s early decision to adopt aggressive social distancing policies may be helping to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus compared to other key states. But the governor said it’s still too early for optimism. “We are not out of the woods yet—by no stretch of the imagination,” he said. The number of confirmed cases in the state topped 8,000, with more than 170 deaths. Los Angeles County officials Tuesday confirmed 10 new coronavirus-linked deaths and reported the first such fatality of a health care worker. The number of deaths in the county is at least 54. Other public health officials mirrored Newsom’s caution. “I want to say that: The incredible sacrifice that everyone has made, I believe it is starting to bend the curve. But it’s not enough and it hasn’t been in place long enough, so we need to keep at it, we just need to keep at it,” said Dr. Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County public health officer. Read more from Ben Christopher of CalMatters and Paige St. John, Rong-Gong Lin II, Richard Winton and Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times.
Daily Edition for Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Newsom Issues Urgent Call For Doctors, Nurses To Enroll In Newly Created California Health Corps: In a bid to dramatically boost the number of health care workers fighting the deadly coronavirus spreading across the Bay Area and beyond, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announced a plan to temporarily bring both recently retired health care workers and students who are about to graduate as doctors and nurses into the workforce. “We need you,” Newsom repeatedly said, aiming his comments at healthcare workers. “We’ll help you with your relicensing, we’ll help you with the protocol and processes to get you up and running and get you out the door so that you can support the needs of people in California. The urgent need for healthcare workers comes as the death toll from the coronavirus in California rose to 142 and the number of confirmed cases surged to more than 6,800. Read more from Emily DeRuy and Maggie Angst of the Bay Area News Group and Melody Gutierrez of the Los Angeles Times.
Daily Edition for Monday, March 30, 2020
Newsom Confident California Can Produce Number Of Ventilators Needed To Handle Escalating Number Of Cases: Gov. Gavin Newsom said Saturday that California has the capacity to produce enough ventilators to meet its projected needs in response to the coronavirus pandemic. But during a tour of a San Jose energy company that is refurbishing outdated ones, he cautioned that the state’s need could expand significantly if the public doesn’t maintain social distancing and the crisis worsens. Newsom said the state needs 10,000 ventilators quickly to treat a surge in COVID-19 patients who need assistance breathing. He said the state has identified 4,250 machines and is working to find more. Overnight, the number of people in California intensive care units jumped from 200 to 410.
Daily Edition for Friday, March 27, 2020
California Leaders Carefully Watch New York In Hopes Of Avoiding Becoming Next Epicenter: New York state has nearly 40,000 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. That’s roughly half of the country’s total, and 10 times as many as in California. About 385 people in New York have died, or more than a third of the U.S. total and five times California’s death toll. California leaders hope the state will get through its coronavirus outbreak with a far less tragic toll, due to more aggressive moves to shut down social interactions and enact stay-home orders on the West Coast. But they’re still closely following events in New York, where cases are mounting so fast that very ill patients are beginning to overwhelm hospitals. The most important lesson from New York may also be the most difficult, said Shannon Bennett, chief of science at the California Academy of Sciences: Sheltering in place works, and Californians need to stick with it to avoid the East Coast fate. Read more from Erin Allday of the San Francisco Chronicle and Brian Melley of The Associated Press.
Daily Edition for Thursday, March 26, 2020
California Doubles Number Of Tests, But Newsom Says It’s Still Not Good Enough: The number of coronavirus tests conducted in California more than doubled, to nearly 67,000, up from 27,000 on Monday, as dozens of new testing sites reported numbers to the state, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday. But California has done far fewer tests than New York, which had conducted nearly 104,000 tests as of Wednesday, according to the Covid Tracking Project, a database of state testing data compiled by journalists at the Atlantic. One explanation is that New York state started testing more people sooner than California because the state requested and received emergency-use authorization from the FDA to start using its own lab-developed test on Feb. 29. Read more from Catherine Ho of the San Francisco Chronicle, and Ana B. Ibarra of CalMatters.
Daily Edition for Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Newsom Warns That Social Distancing Measures Will Likely Last At Least Through April If Not Longer: Californians should expect social distancing measures to last at least through April as the state fights coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday. “We’re trying to bend that curve, but we haven’t bent it,” Newsom said. “April for California would be sooner than any of the experts I talked to would believe is possible.” Newsom’s comments come a day after President Donald Trump said “America will again and soon be open for business” as the dramatic measures taken to fight the disease have ground much of the country’s economy to a halt. Read more from Sophia Bollag of the Sacramento Bee, and Joe Garofoli and Alexei Koseff of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Daily Edition for Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Steep Rise In Hospitalizations In L.A. Signal Oncoming Surge Of Critical Cases: As of March 6, five people in Los Angeles county had been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19. Two weeks later, on Friday, that figure had jumped to 48. By Monday, the total had climbed to 90. Though the raw numbers remain relatively low, the rate of increase has set many doctors and nurses on edge after watching the disease’s alarming trajectory in China, Italy and now New York City. Meanwhile, Sacramento County saw its biggest jump of cases yet on Monday, with 88 reported cases and a fourth death. That represents an increase of 35 cases since the previous report during the weekend, mirroring increased cases statewide and nationally. “We don’t have much time,” said ER physician Dr. Marc Futernick, who works at a downtown L.A. hospital. “These are decisions that we need to make really soon before we are in the throes of the tsunami.”
Daily Edition for Monday, March 23, 2020
Newsom Announces New Plans To Deal With Expected Surge Of Cases As Californians Are Scolded For Not Staying Home: Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans over the weekend to open two new hospitals, and President Donald Trump said the federal government will ship a number of mobile hospital units to the state, pay for National Guard deployments and deploy the San Diego-based naval hospital ship Mercy to Los Angeles. At Newsom’s request, Trump on Sunday declared a “major disaster” in California. The formal declaration will let California — which as of this weekend had 1,468 positive cases and 27 deaths from the coronavirus — offer more emergency aid, unemployment assistance and disaster legal services. Among other provisions, the declaration will allow people like business owners who do not qualify for regular unemployment insurance to apply for disaster unemployment insurance.