Coronavirus updates: California records 15,000th death as US nears 200,000
The death toll from coronavirus has surpassed 15,000 in California and is nearing 200,000 across the United States.
The California Department of Public Health on Monday reported a relatively low daily total of 31 new deaths, but it was enough to push the state past another grim threshold, bringing the all-time tally to 15,018 deaths from the respiratory disease.
The nationwide COVID-19 fatality count was at just over 199,700 as of midday Monday, according to data maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
The 200,000 mark will be surpassed shortly, possibly on Monday. The U.S. has recently averaged several hundred virus deaths a day, and the Golden State has seen 92 daily deaths on average in the past two weeks, according to Johns Hopkins and CDPH.
Saturday marked six months since Gov. Gavin Newsom issued his stay-at-home order, limiting economic activity at that time to bare-bones essentials and directing the state’s 40 million residents not to gather in groups. California became the first state to do so, on March 19, and the rest of the nation followed soon after.
Currently, with Monday the last day before the calendar flips over to autumn, varying levels of COVID-19 restrictions remain in place across the country, where the highly contagious disease has struck at different times and with different intensities.
For California, a large surge in virus activity — influxes of new infections, hospitalizations, intensive care unit admissions and the deaths that lagged a few weeks behind them — lasted essentially the first half of summer 2020, from late June through early or mid-August, state data show.
State leaders halted reopening in the first half of July as a result, after shopping malls, hair salons, bars and restaurants’ indoor dining rooms had gotten the OK to reopen, with modifications, from May through mid-June. August was California’s deadliest month of the pandemic, with about 3,800 residents dying of COVID-19.
But after considerable and steady improvement in the past several weeks, Newsom and the state let economic reopening once again resume, this time with a more gradual, four-tiered “framework” that went into effect Aug. 31, with most of California’s 58 counties in the strictest tier, purple.
Professional haircuts could resume statewide, with masks required. But to regain permission for most other indoor businesses and activities including dining, movie theaters, places of worship and schools to once again open back up, purple counties now need to be promoted to a less restrictive tier (red, orange or yellow). A handful of mostly rural, less densely populated counties have made the move from purple to red in the first few weeks under the new system.
At the statewide level, virus activity has reached its lowest point in more than five months, according to certain key measures. After a peak of close to 7,200 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in late July, with about 2,050 of them in ICUs, those numbers have dropped as of Sunday’s update to state data to fewer than 2,600 and a little over 800, respectively. It’s the lowest for each figure since early April.
And test positivity rate — the percentage of diagnostic tests for COVID-19 that return positive, which is viewed as a solid indicator of the true spread of the virus even as the raw number of tests conducted might fluctuate — has plummeted, down to 3.1% over the past two weeks and 2.8% over the most recent seven days.
The rolling two-week average for positivity is at its lowest point since California started keeping track of it in April. Test positivity previously stabilized at around 4.5% beginning in mid-May. The state has recently conducted almost twice as many daily tests as it had been at that point.
The state has climbed to more than 781,000 total COVID-19 cases, but the daily rate of new infections has steadily declined from close to 9,000 in late July to about 3,300 a day in the past two weeks.
Can coronavirus can be spread through the air?
For most of the public health crisis, the prevailing belief and information put forward by health agencies including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been that the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease known as COVID-19, is spread mainly person-to-person via small respiratory droplets released while breathing, sneezing, coughing, talking or singing.
Health officials, from the local to national levels, have long said that it is important to keep 6 feet of distance from others to prevent the virus from passing between people this way.
Last Friday, the CDC quietly updated its guidance on how the coronavirus can be spread to say there is “additional evidence” that droplets can also linger in the air, being inhaled by others across a distance of more than 6 feet. This is also known as aerosol transmission.
But on Monday the CDC pulled this new information from its website, saying it was a draft version that was published in error. A CDC official told The Washington Post the guidelines were removed because “that does not reflect our current state of knowledge.”
Hundreds of scientists published a paper this summer urging the World Health Organization to consider that the coronavirus may be spread via airborne transmission. Whether this a significant source of spread is a question whose answer could have a major effect on mitigation measures.
While the aerosol transmission guidelines were still on the website, the CDC didn’t offer specific guidance for preventing COVID-19 spread given this potential avenue of transmission, but wrote that generally, “indoor environments without good ventilation increase this risk,” further reinforcing the idea that outdoor gatherings may be safer than indoor ones.
California unemployment claims paused 2 weeks
California’s Employment Development Department, beleaguered by a record-shattering volume of claims as businesses shuttered or laid off employees due to the pandemic, will pause accepting new unemployment claims for the next two weeks as it clears out a backlog.
EDD Director Sharon Hilliard announced the pause, which will last until Oct. 5, late Saturday evening.
The state has about 1.6 million pending claims, and doesn’t expect to work through that backlog until late January. The department is also investigating a surge in suspicious claims as suspected fraud.
The pause on new claims is not expected to interrupt payments for people already in the system.
Folsom Prison nearing 1,100 inmate cases, most of them in past 2 weeks
The COVID-19 infection total at Folsom State Prison has grown substantially since an outbreak was first reported at the institution last month.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says at least 1,087 Folsom inmates and 47 employees have tested positive for the virus to date.
According to a CDCR data dashboard last updated Monday morning, 479 Folsom inmates had COVID-19 previously but have since recovered, and 10 were released from the prison with cases still active. The remaining 598 cases remain active and in custody, with 585 of those having tested positive for the first time in the past two weeks.
CDCR reports no Folsom inmate deaths from COVID-19 as of Monday morning.
The prison had 2,430 inmates incarcerated, and 1,867 of them have been tested in the past two weeks, CDCR says. The 585 new cases in those 14 days works out to 31% of tested inmates returning positive.
As recently as mid-August, CDCR boasted in a brief statement following the disclosure of 125 new cases that it tested more than 1,000 Folsom inmates in a week, with less than 1% of those results returning positive.
Immediately after that statement was released, about 100 new cases poured in, CDCR data show. The prison’s active cases for inmates then plateaued between about 200 and 270 for the next three weeks. The case total erupted earlier this month, with cases more than doubling in a week, from 208 on Sept. 7 to 540 on Sept. 14.
CDCR officials have offered little explanation for what may have caused the outbreak to surge as it has. Department spokeswoman Dana Simas, in an emailed statement to The Bee last Wednesday, said CDCR was “monitoring the situation very closely” and has “implemented serial testing for inmates, increased staffing, and facilitated isolation for those that have tested positive to COVID-19,” with tents installed to allow for increased isolation and space.
Prisons in general have been a hotbed for coronavirus spread, with the crowded nature of California’s state prisons making social distancing a major challenge.
Folsom State Prison has by far the state’s largest outbreak in terms of active cases as of Monday, though Avenal State Prison and San Quentin have each seen outbreaks involving more than 2,200 inmates, the majority of whom have since recovered. At least 60 inmates across the state prison system have died of COVID-19, 26 of them at San Quentin
Greater Sacramento area approaching 500 coronavirus deaths
Sacramento, Yolo, Placer, El Dorado, Sutter and Yuba counties have combined for 499 COVID-19 deaths and over 30,000 infections since the pandemic began.
Sacramento County health officials have recorded 21,628 all-time infections and 383 deaths, with 457 new cases added to the tally Monday for the preceding three days.
At least 42 county residents have died from Sept. 1 to Sept. 17, the local COVID-19 dashboard shows, breaking down the total by date of death. Two recent, additional confirmations for August have increased that month’s death toll to a record 172, nearly doubling July’s total of 88.
Of the 383 total fatalities, 216 have come in the city of Sacramento, which accounts for about 12,500 of the county’s cases. The capital city reached 100 reported deaths in early August, about five months after its first virus death. The next 116 deaths took only about a month-and-a-half.
Sacramento County had 120 patients in hospital beds and 42 in ICUs as of Monday, according to state data. The numbers are down from peaks of about 280 hospitalized and 90 in the ICU as of late July.
Sacramento County remains in the purple tier.
Yolo County health officials have reported a total of 54 COVID-19 deaths among 2,754 infections, reporting seven new cases Monday and one new fatality Saturday at a long-term care facility. There were six infected patients in Yolo County hospitals as of Monday, three of them in intensive care, with each figure increasing by one from the previous day’s update. The county has five ICU beds available.
Yolo has seen outbreaks at several long-term care facilities, which account for 148 of the total cases and 27 of its deaths. The county, like Sacramento County, is coded purple.
Placer County has reported a total of 3,488 cases and 41 deaths, with two fatalities reported last week. The county reported 38 new cases Sunday and another 22 Monday. There are 25 people hospitalized due to COVID-19 in the county, and the ICU count is at 10, the county says. The hospitalized total had plateaued at around 65 in early-to-mid August before declining sharply; the ICU total peaked at 16 on Aug. 25.
Placer County was promoted from the purple tier to the red tier two weeks ago.
El Dorado County has reported a total of 1,073 COVID-19 cases and four deaths as of Monday, adding nine new cases since last week. The county reported two of its four fatalities last week. No patients were hospitalized with the disease and the county had six ICU beds available as of Monday, according to state data. El Dorado County has been coded red by state health officials.
Sutter County has reported a total of 1,678 COVID-19 cases and 10 total deaths as of Monday afternoon. The county reported 10 new cases Monday. There were 14 infected people hospitalized in the county, including five in intensive care Monday.
In neighboring Yuba County, a total of 1,129 people have been infected with COVID-19 and seven have died. The county reported four new cases Monday. Six infected people in Yuba County were hospitalized as of Monday, with four of them in intensive care, the county said.
Both Sutter and Yuba counties, which share a bi-county health office, are coded purple.
World numbers: Global death toll climbs toward 1 million
Globally, over 31.1 million people have been infected with the coronavirus and more than 962,000 people have died as of Monday afternoon, according to Johns Hopkins University, an increase of about 14,000 fatalities over the weekend.
The United States accounts for the largest share of infections and deaths of any country, with more than 6.8 million confirmed cases and 199,700 dead.
Brazil is the next leading nation in terms of deaths, at about 137,000. India, which now has close to 5.5 million infections, has overtaken Brazil’s case total by close to 1 million. Nearly 88,000 have died of COVID-19 in India, according to Johns Hopkins. Next in terms of death toll are Mexico at more than 73,000, the United Kingdom at almost 42,000, Italy at over 35,000, France and Peru each over 31,000 and Spain at just over 30,000 dead.
Over 24,000 have died in each of Colombia and Iran. About 19,000 have died in Russia, and close to 16,000 have died in South Africa.
If California were a country, it would rank No. 14 worldwide in deaths with its toll of more than 15,000. The state has reported more deaths than multiple nations with comparable or larger population. Those include Argentina, which has a few more million people but only 13,000 dead; Germany, which has close to double California’s population but 9,400 deaths; and Canada, which is close to California in population but reports just over 9,200 dead.
This story was originally published September 21, 2020 at 9:01 AM with the headline "Coronavirus updates: California records 15,000th death as US nears 200,000."
