Newsom’s COVID-19 warning: ‘Wake up’

State will provide $52M to Central Valley, where infection rates, hospitalizations on rise

Nearing the end of one of California’s most disheartening months during the coronavirus pandemic, the state is launching a major effort to stop the disease’s rapid spread in the Central Valley, where infection rates and hospitalizations are soaring.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday that the state will provide $52 million to help support the hard-hit region. The money, part of a $199 million federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant, will be used to improve quarantine and testing protocols and hire more health care workers.

California, once seen as a model for preventing the spread of COVID-19, is now averaging 9,859 new cases a day, Newsom said. Hospitals and their intensive care units across the state are filling up. The seven-day average of deaths in California rose from 91 per day two weeks ago to 109 per day in the past week ending on Monday, according to the governor’s figures.

As of Monday, the state had recorded more than 452,600 cases and 8,450 deaths, according to statistics compiled by this news organization.

“What more evidence do you need than that about how deadly this disease can be,” Newsom said during a news briefing from the Diamond Nuts facility in Stockton on Monday. “Please, let’s wake up to that reality.”

The governor’s watchlist of counties showing concerning coronavirus trends, which just last month included a fraction of the state, has grown to 37 counties that make up 93% of the state’s population. Santa Cruz County on Monday became the latest in the Bay Area added to the list.

Of particular concern are eight counties that make up the state’s Central Valley, including Fresno, Kings, Kern, Merced and Stanislaus, where community spread is disproportionately affecting residents there.

While public health experts initially focused on stopping the spread in densely populated urban areas of the country, the disease now is being transmitted at record levels across the state’s agriculture midsection — from Kern County all the way north to Yuba County.

In Central Valley counties, residents are getting positive COVID-19 test results at a rate ranging from 10.7% to nearly 17.7% — far higher than the statewide average of 7.5%, according to data from the California Department of Public Health. Many hospitals in the region have requested additional staffing from the state to help meet surges in their facilities. And some of the counties are experiencing effective transmission rates of up to 1.4, meaning that each person infected transmits the virus, on average, to 1.4 people, according to data shared by Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency.

Dr. George Rutherford, a UC San Francisco epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert, said the only way to break the cycle is to create places where people can isolate when doing so at home isn’t a practical option, especially among the state’s low-income Latino population that makes up a large portion of essential workers.

“It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure that people are being bused out to work, pretty tightly packed in, and then go back to dense housing at night either with multigenerational housing or lots of roommates,” Rutherford said. “That’s the newer pattern of transmission that we’re seeing now, and we have to identify the people infected and isolate them.”

The surge in COVID-19 cases and positive test results are worrying Californians everywhere.

A survey released Monday by the Public Policy Institute of California found that more than 3 in 4 residents are worried about themselves or someone in their family getting infected by COVID-19. And 7 in 10 Californians say they’re worried about the pandemic hurting their own or their family’s finances.

But just as the disease disproportionately infects the state’s Latino population, so does it weigh on their mind. Latinos were about two times more likely to say they were worried about their finances and health than white and Asian residents, according to the survey.

As of Monday, all nine Bay Area counties except for San Mateo have been added to the governor’s watchlist — prohibiting them from opening schools, indoor salons, zoos and malls.

Meanwhile, Contra Costa County and Berkeley this week will consider joining Napa and Marin counties in issuing fines to anyone violating public health orders, whether it’s businesses that refuse to shut their doors or people who don’t follow face-covering and social distancing requirements.

On another front against the disease, more than 700 Bay Area health care workers on Sunday issued a statement urging Newsom and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to reduce the state’s prison population by half. As of Monday, nearly 7% of those incarcerated in the state have tested positive for the virus, compared with 1.1% of all Californians. Four inmates at San Quentin State Prison died over the weekend of apparent COVID-19 complications, bringing the total to 19 — the second-largest coronavirus outbreak among the state’s prisons.

Because of testing shortages and delays, California health officials are no longer encouraging everyone who wants a test to get one, said Dr. Gil Chavez, co-chair of the state’s testing task force. Across the state, many residents aren’t getting their results for nearly two weeks after taking a COVID-19 test — causing a significant hurdle for disease control.

“Are we at a point where we can say everyone that wants a test can get a test? The answer is not today,” Chavez said. “We need to prioritize the testing for those who need it the most for public health purposes.”

“Are we at a point where we can say everyone that wants a test can get a test? The answer is not today. We need to prioritize the testing for those who need it the most for public health purposes.” — Dr. Gil Chavez, co-chair of the state’s testing task force