As the number of California coronavirus infection cases reached 1,500, state officials called on residents to stay home as much as possible, raced to get more people tested and enlisted the support of tech titans. Experts, meanwhile, warned that the number of U.S. deaths would rise in the months ahead.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-diseases specialist, said Sunday that although the United States was “not necessarily” on the same trajectory as that of Italy — which has the world’s largest coronavirus-related death toll — “we’re going to get hit, there’s no doubt about it.”
Italy’s death toll stands at more than 4,800, including 793 on Saturday alone, Italian officials said.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that some aspects of Italy’s crushing death toll were not yet fully understood by scientists.
“If you look at the dynamics of the outbreak in Italy, we don’t know why they are suffering so terribly,” he said, adding that “many of us believe that early on they did not shut out as well the input of infections that originated in China and came to different parts of the world.”
U.S. prospects may have been improved by bans on travel from China and Europe.
“We have from the beginning been able to put a bit of a clamper” on outside cases, Fauci said.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge on Sunday ordered the Sylmar Courthouse closed for three days after a deputy public defender assigned to the courthouse tested positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, the court said in a news release.
Presiding Judge Kevin Brazile was notified Saturday that the attorney had tested positive last week after caring for a relative who also tested positive, the court said. Affected judges and staff will self-quarantine for 14 days, it said.
The courthouse handles juvenile delinquency cases in two courtrooms, and both have been cleaned and disinfected, officials said. Cases on the calendar for the next three days have been moved to the Michael D. Antonovich Antelope Valley Courthouse in Lancaster. The Sylmar Courthouse is scheduled to reopen Thursday.
Amid the steady rise in cases, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday pleaded for residents to avoid unnecessary social contact after scattered reports across the state that some people had been flocking to the coast, gathering with friends or failing to follow social-distance orders.
The governor stressed that even those who didn’t show any symptoms of COVID-19, including young adults who appear to be less likely to become gravely ill if they do contract the disease, needed to cooperate for the good of others in their communities.
The governor’s stay-at-home order will remain in effect until “further notice” and could be changed as conditions warrant, according to a statement released by the governor’s office. Issued under broad powers granted to the governor under the state’s Emergency Services Act, Newsom’s executive order is enforceable by law.
Newsom said Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple, had pledged 1 million medical masks to be donated specifically to California’s coronavirus efforts. And he said manufacturers in Los Angeles’ garment district and in Northern California had reached out to sew additional masks if needed.
A key need in California and across the country is ventilators, necessary for some of the most serious COVID-19 patients, and the governor cited new efforts by two entrepreneurs to assist in producing the medical equipment. Newsom said that Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc. and Space X, had promised to use the supply chains that supported his companies for help in assembling ventilators. The governor also said that K.R. Sridhar, the CEO of Bloom Energy, agreed to help quickly modernize some 200 older ventilators that the state had on hand. The original manufacturer, Newsom said, had estimated doing so would take about a month.
California, like other states hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, has seen a shortage of complete testing kits. Those challenges have hindered the ability of public health officials to get an accurate assessment of the virus’ spread. Newsom, who said he had had encouraging conversations with President Trump on additional federal help, said coronavirus testing needed to do more than just document the numbers of ailing state residents.
“My team is no longer providing me just the number of people that have tested positive. They’re equally weighting the number of people that have tested negative,” Newsom said. “The bottom line for us is we want to know what the spread is. We want to know if we’re bending the curve. We want to know if our stay-at-home orders are effective.”
In addition to California, New York has been hard-hit by the virus. Cases are concentrated on the West and East coasts, and New York City is home to about one-third of those. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, appearing on NBC’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, said, “New Yorkers and all Americans deserve the blunt truth: It is only getting worse.
“And in fact, April and May are going to be a lot worse,” he said.
Fauci said federal resources were being “clearly directed toward hot spots that need it most.”
In California, Newsom pointed to efforts in Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara counties to use testing as a form of what he called “community surveillance” to better understand local health conditions.
“These were just broad random tests that were done with people that were otherwise young and healthy and thought they were perfectly healthy,” Newsom said.
The results, he said, allowed health officials to improve their use of already scarce medical resources.
The death toll in the state connected to the coronavirus now stands at 27.
Los Angeles County health officials Saturday confirmed two more coronavirus-related deaths and 59 new cases, bringing the total confirmed cases in the county to 353.
The individuals who died were both older than 65 with underlying health conditions; one person lived in the Miracle Mile area and the other in Del Rey, public health officials said in a statement.
Officials have said that the current total of 1,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 is a gross underestimation because of the lack of tests. Testing picked up this week, but healthcare authorities said they still didn’t have anything close to a firm estimate of how many people had been infected.
About 25,200 tests had been conducted in California, by both commercial and private labs, as of 2 p.m. Friday, the state Department of Public Health said Saturday. Results for more than 12,700 of them were pending.
A growing number of the cases in California are instances of community transmission, in which the person diagnosed had not recently traveled or been in contact with another confirmed case. Those cases indicate that the virus is spreading locally within communities.
Community transmission has been identified in California since late February, and since early March, most of the cases in the state have been unrelated to international travel, the state Public Health Department said Saturday. Therefore, the state will no longer collect information about travelers returning to California from countries with confirmed outbreaks of COVID-19, the Public Health Department said.
From Los Angeles’ Griffith Park to Westside beaches, Southern California greeted its first weekend of a public health stay-at-home order with pluck, humor and notable kindness. At a Granada Hills Starbucks drive-through line, customers “paid it backward.” And in a Laurel Canyon neighborhood, residents opened their windows for a “You’ve Got a Friend” singalong.
Still, there were some rough spots: Overflowing lines at markets and food giveaways continued to ratchet up anxiety and some harsh encounters. The first reported coronavirus infections among Los Angeles police officers, with three testing positive this week, gave reason for added worry. And Los Angeles city officials scrambled to open five more emergency shelters for homeless people.
The Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Venice Beach Boardwalk, the Grove shopping center and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills all went mostly bereft of visitors over the weekend. Usually crowded streets were mostly open, and parking spaces were free for the taking.
But along the coast in Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades, cars lined up for parking lots at Will Rogers State Beach and nearby Temescal Gateway Park. A few roller skaters and cyclists wore masks and gloves, though none could be seen on the surfers enjoying a stunning blue-sky day, with views all the way to Santa Catalina Island.
“Be a good neighbor. Be a good citizen. Those young people that are still out there on the beaches thinking this is a party time — grow up,” Newsom said during a news conference on Facebook and Twitter on Saturday afternoon. “It’s time to wake up, time to recognize it’s not just about the old folks. It’s about your impact on their lives. Don’t be selfish; recognize you have a responsibility to meet this moment.”
Complaints of noncompliance have popped up on social media and apps such as the neighborhood forum Nextdoor.com. The Marin County Sheriff’s Office on Saturday tweeted out a photo of people congregating on the coast, imploring residents to stay home.
“We understand the communities’ frustrations with the LARGE amount of people traveling to the Coast today and NOT practicing social distancing. We are working with the Public Health Officers to address the issue. Please stay at home!” the Sheriff’s Office said.
Times staff writers John Myers, James Rainey and Jack Dolan contributed to this report.
