Coronavirus updates: Passengers sent to Pacific Grove, California county bans gatherings
Strategies to combat the coronavirus outbreak continue to evolve at the state and local levels, with Sacramento County on Monday announcing that it no longer recommends isolation or quarantine for those exposed to a COVID-19 patient.
As Dr. Peter Beilenson, director of the county’s Department of Health Services, said Monday in an interview with The Sacramento Bee, the region has now reached a volume of cases for which it is not feasible to track all instances of contact and exposure.
“So we move to mitigation, which is basically trying to mitigate the risk to those who are most at risk: the elderly and those with chronic underlying conditions,” Beilenson said Monday.
Beilenson also said an elementary student within the Elk Grove Unified School District, which shut all of its campuses down this week due to the coronavirus, has tested positive for coronavirus. The student is currently at home and is doing well, Beilenson said.
Elk Grove Unified, the county education office and county health officials issued a joint statement Monday evening that said the student goes to Maeola R. Beitzel Elementary School.
According to a district statement, the student’s family was placed in a quarantine after two household members tested positive, and four children in the home were prioritized for testing. The Beitzel student tested positive and three of the child’s siblings tested negative, with the results coming early Monday, officials said.
In the same announcement, Sacramento County says it now has 10 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19, with one of those patients having recovered.
The developments come as the worldwide coronavirus outbreak inches closer to pandemic status, with the director of the World Health Organization this week saying the threat of a pandemic is now “very real.” Italy on Monday took the astounding step of closing off the entire country, which has a population of about 60 million people, where reports document more than 9,000 confirmed cases and more than 450 deaths.
In the U.S., coronavirus activity remains densest in a handful of states, including Washington and California. Washington has surpassed 25 deaths due to the disease, state officials say, and on Monday, California’s second death was reported.
Cruise ship passengers taken to Pacific Grove
State officials announced Tuesday night that up to 24 passengers who disembarked the Grand Princess cruise ship in Oakland will be taken to Asilomar State Beach and Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, about 70 miles southwest of San Jose. These passengers have been screened by medical professionals.
They have mild symptoms that do not require hospitalization, so they cannot be quarantined at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, state officials said. None of these passengers is known to have contracted COVID-19, but they will be tested and monitored while at Asilomar.
They will spend mandatory 14 days of quarantine in a cluster of buildings at Asilomar State Beach. The buildings are separated from visitors and the public, and there will be no interaction with other Asilomar guests or employees.
“These residents have endured a lot of stress in the last few days, and our top priority is to protect their health, and the public health of California, until they can return to their homes,” said California Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said in a news release.
He also said that state officials were collaborating with federal agencies and local officials to ensure the community surrounding Asilomar is not impacted.
Santa Clara County bans large gatherings
Hours after reporting the county’s first coronavirus death and with more than 40 other cases reported there, Santa Clara on Monday announced a sweeping, mandatory ban on events with more than 1,000 attendees.
The county, in a news conference and statement, said the ban will start Wednesday and last at least three weeks, and be enforced by the sheriff’s office and local police departments.
The ban will not include airports, shopping centers or places where people are considered to be in transit, county officials said, and school closures have also not been recommended.
The ban will, though, apply to San Jose Sharks hockey games and other events planned at the SAP Center in San Jose. The team and the arena in a statement Monday said they would adhere to the ban, but that a final decision on how to handle the three upcoming home games for the remainder of March has not yet been made. The Sharks’ next home game is March 17.
The Sharks could conceivably play those games in an arena devoid of fans, a hot topic being discussed in all major sports that are currently in season. The NHL team could also potentially postpone or reschedule the games, or could relocate the contests to neutral or road sites, according to a report by NBC Sports.
Grand Princess: Cruise ship has docked. Now what?
The beleaguered cruise ship, rerouted back to California from a Hawaiian voyage and stuck off the coast for several days as test kits were flown onto and off of the ship, finally docked in the Port of Oakland midday Monday.
Of 3,500 on board, about 2,400 passengers will disembark and be placed into mandatory quarantine, primarily at military facilities. Those from California, a little less than 1,000 of the passengers, will be quarantined for 14 days at either Travis Air Force Base near Fairfield or at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar near San Diego.
People who live outside California will be taken to facilities in other states, also for 14-day quarantines, federal officials and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services announced earlier this week.
The approximately 1,100 crew members will remain on the Grand Princess and be quarantined on the ship.
The disembarking process is expected to be a multi-day process, with efforts continuing Tuesday. Authorities with the federal Department of Health and Human Services worked Monday afternoon and evening to screen and offload passengers, after first allowing the sickest of patients — suffering from COVID-19 or any other illness or condition — to be transported for immediate medical care.
Of the first 46 people tested, 21 people on the Grand Princess were confirmed positive for the coronavirus, federal officials said. Nineteen of the 21 positives were reportedly crew members.
Concerns surrounding the cruise ship first arose after two former passengers from its prior journey, roundtrip from San Francisco to Mexico, became ill and were later diagnosed with COVID-19 after disembarking in San Francisco on Feb. 21. One of those patients, a 71-year-old Rocklin man, died last week, Placer County officials announced Wednesday.
What will happen to California’s economy?
The stock market plummeted Monday, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq and S&P 500 each fell 7 percent. The Dow posted its biggest single-day point loss ever after closing Monday down more than 2,014 points, but rebounded by 800 points to open Tuesday.
But what about California, which pulls in nearly $150 billion from tourism?
Sung Won Sohn, an economic consultant and business professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, told The Bee this week he sees a recession as about a 50-50 likelihood. Economist Jeff Michael, of University of the Pacific, noted Golden 1 Center is set to host the first two rounds of March Madness next week. How many college basketball fans will elect not to fly to Sacramento amid coronavirus concern?
Matters are worse for the Bay Area, which has seen slowdowns in iPhone shipments from Apple’s Chinese supplier.
“You look at the hotel deals you can get, the flight deals you can get, you can imagine that demand isn’t what some of these companies were expecting,” said Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Economic Institute.
Port cities are suffering as well. The Los Angeles and Long Beach ports are forecasting a 15 percent drop in cargo traffic for the first three months of 2020.
“This is having a serious impact on agricultural exporters in California,” Jock O’Connell, an international trade consultant in Sacramento, told The Bee this week.
By the numbers: US exceeds 750 cases, CA over 130
Maps and live data being maintained by Johns Hopkins University showed the global number of coronavirus cases surpass 116,000 early Tuesday. The worldwide death total has eclipsed 4,000.
More than 760 of the infections are in the United States, where at least 27 people have died — 23 in Washington state, two in California and two in Florida, according to Johns Hopkins.
The California Department of Public Health in its latest update broke down California “by the numbers,” with totals accurate as of 7 a.m. Monday. Of 133 positive cases total, 24 are from repatriation flights.
The other 109 confirmed cases include:
▪ 44 travel-related cases
▪ 28 cases of person-to-person spread involving known patients
▪ 19 “community acquired” cases
▪ 18 cases “from unknown sources”
The department says an additional total of about 10,300 Californians are self-monitoring after returning from international travel.
There are 17 labs in California that currently test for COVID-19, the Department of Public Health says.
What is coronavirus? What are the symptoms?
The novel coronavirus is spread through contact between people within six feet of each other, especially through coughing and sneezing that expels respiratory droplets that land in the mouths or noses of people nearby. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it’s possible to catch COVID-19 by touching something that has the virus on it, and then touching your own face, “but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”
Symptoms of the virus that causes COVID-19 include fever, cough and shortness of breath, which may occur two days to two weeks after exposure. Most develop only mild symptoms, but some people develop more severe symptoms, including pneumonia, which can be fatal. The disease is especially dangerous to the elderly and others with weaker immune systems.
This story was originally published March 10, 2020 at 8:22 AM with the headline "Coronavirus updates: Passengers sent to Pacific Grove, California county bans gatherings."
