State eclipses 50,000 death
Winter case surge looks to be over; health experts say the next few weeks will be a 'critical window'
California passed 50,000 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, a sober milestone for the Golden State since the pandemic arrived just over a year ago.
Put in perspective, the state’s coronavirus death total is 14 times higher than the total from every major earthquake in California’s recorded history combined, including the 1906 San Francisco quake, the 1989 Loma Prieta quake and the 1994 Northridge quake.
As of late Wednesday afternoon, there have been more than 50,900 COVID-19 deaths in California since the start of the pandemic. About two-thirds of those were concentrated in five of California’s 58 counties, all in Southern California: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino. Only 13 countries have recorded more than 50,000 deaths during the pandemic, and California is the first state in the U.S. to reach the total. On Monday, the U.S. recorded 500,000 deaths from the virus, by far the highest of any country in the world.
In Yolo County, as of Wednesday evening, 185 people have died.
As the winter surge in cases has passed, however, the overall trend continues to decline, with deaths in California down nearly 60% from a month ago, and new cases down nearly 90% over the same time period.
“We are in a critical window right now for another four to five weeks,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, a professor emeritus of public health at UC Berkeley. “If we can continue to keep these numbers going down, and get into April with the numbers very low, by April the vaccine will be plentiful, and we are going to see the
profound effects of it. We could be in great shape by early summer.”
California’s death milestone came on a day when the Biden administration announced its latest effort to control viral spread: It will send millions of free masks to food banks and community health clinics in the coming weeks under a new program aimed at providing better protection against COVID-19 to low-income people who have been hit hardest by the pandemic.
Under the plan, 25 million masks will go out starting in March to 1,300 community health clinics and up to 60,000 food pantries and soup kitchens in California and other states.
“Not all Americans are wearing masks regularly, not all Americans have access, and not all masks are equal,” said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients. “With this action we are helping to level the playing field, giving vulnerable populations quality, well-fitting masks.”
California’s Health and Human Services secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, agreed.
“COVID-19 is still prevalent in our communities and we must keep our guard up,” he said. “Making masks more accessible to communities hit the hardest by this pandemic will only further help to slow the spread of this disease.”
Swartzberg said he’s still concerned that as case numbers decline, people will gather in big groups too quickly, remove masks and take other risky behaviors as several highly contagious new strains of the virus continue to spread. He and other experts praised the new White House program to expand mask distribution.
“Low-income residents are at the highest risk for getting infected, the highest risk for dying and the highest risk for spreading the virus,” he said. “They are going to be more protected and the rest of society is going to be more protected. It’s a win-win.”
In low-income households, people often live in crowded conditions, with multi-generations of families, he said. Low-income workers also are more likely to hold jobs where they are at high risk of catching COVID-19, including working in restaurants, farms, food processing plants, and other “essential” occupations.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, called the new program “a long time coming” that sends a strong message about the support for wearing masks, the “cheapest, easiest and best way to slow the spread for people who have to go out and work.” She noted that other countries, such as Taiwan, have provided free masks to essential workers and low-income residents for the past year.
“Many people cannot stay at home,” Gandhi said. “To put food on their table they have to go out and work. Our pandemic response up to this point has not favored the working class.”
Last April, as the pandemic was beginning to spread widely, the Trump administration considered using the U.S. Postal Service to mail 650 million masks to people across the United States. But Trump cancelled the program over concerns by White House aides that it would create “concern or panic.”
Under the new White House mask plan, the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense will deliver “high quality, washable” fitted cloth masks that are made in the United States
in individually wrapped packages of two each to “federally qualified community health centers.” Twothirds of the people served by community health centers are living in poverty, 60% are ethnic minorities, and nearly 1.4 million are homeless.
The Department of Defense also will distribute masks to roughly 300 food banks, which deliver food to 60,000 food pantries, soup kitchens and other food distribution points.
“If we get them, we’ll give them out,” said Taylor Johnson, executive director of Tri-City Volunteers food bank and pantry in Fremont. “When we check people out, we could ask if people want them, or put them in every bag.”
Johnson noted that the pandemic has caused a massive increase in the number of people relying on food pantries to get by. His organization, which served 200 people a day before the pandemic, saw its demand leap to 600 a day, he said. It has dipped to about 400 a day now.
“So many businesses closed down — restaurants, small businesses,” Johnson said. “Some of them haven’t re-opened. I’d say more than 50% of the people we serve have never asked for