A test for state’s virus response
America remains so thoroughly in the dark about its worldbeating share of the coronavirus pandemic that we can hardly guess when and where it started. Recent revelations about the virus’ arrival in the Bay Area underline the testing failures that hobbled California and the country’s response from the beginning and continue to haunt the effort to this day.
Santa Clara County officials have confirmed that a San Jose woman’s death on Feb. 6 was due to the novel coronavirus. That was about a month earlier that what were previously thought to be the first cases in California and the Bay Area; nearly three weeks earlier than what had been the nation’s earliest known death from the pathogen, on Feb. 26 near Seattle; and more than two weeks before President Trump declared the contagion to be “very much under control in the USA.”
Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County’s health officer, said the death was one of three newly confirmed local coronavirus fatalities in February and March that were probably due to “more widespread transmission than we had previously understood” within the region and “likely represent the tips of icebergs.” They suggest the virus was spreading here in early January.
The county’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Michelle Jorden, said she suspected the coronavirus at the time of the deaths. But the county had no capacity to test for it at the time, while the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would only provide testing in cases with a history of travel to known coronavirus hot spots.
The findings are in keeping with recent studies suggesting the extent of infections in the Bay Area, Southern California and other metropolitan areas could be several times the confirmed number, another consequence of persistent diagnostic deficits. While Cody was a driving force behind the Bay Area’s firstinthenation shelterinplace orders, she said she may have acted even earlier if the county had been able to detect the spread of the virus in January and February. Federal miscues plagued testing then, and there is little evidence of a more coherent national strategy to detect antibodies and possible immunity among those exposed to the virus, often unknowingly.
The country, and California in particular, are still struggling to close the gap between current testing and the capacity needed to lift economically devastating distancing measures without sickening and killing vastly more people. Gov. Gavin Newsom estimated this week that the state, with among the lowest percapita testing rates in the country, has to quadruple the 16,000 tests being administered daily.
The governor has established a task force on testing, promised to open scores of new testing sites and set a goal of 25,000 daily tests by the end of next week. He also said Trump had promised to provide the state with hundreds of thousands of nasal swabs, shortages of which have been among the factors hindering mass testing.
Newsom’s willingness to work with his sometime nemesis in the White House is admirable and appropriate, but the president’s record suggests that ramping up testing, like much of the response to the pandemic, will be largely up to state and local officials. This is a test for the governor.