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Gov. Newsom orders all Californians to stay home as coronavirus cases top 1,000

By TARYN LUNA STAFF WRITER | MARCH 20, 2020 | 8:35 AM

SACRAMENTO — The day after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced extraordinary measures directing all Californias to stay at home amid the coronavirus outbreak, Contra Costa County on Friday announced its first death related to the virus.

The person was in their 70s, had an underlying medical condition and had recently traveled overseas, officials said. The patient died Thursday in an undisclosed hospital, becoming the 20th person to die of the virus in California.
The number of reported cases continues to rise across the state. A veteran tested positive at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center on Wednesday. The person is being cared for in isolation, and the risk of transmission to other patients and staff is low, said Steve Ruh, chief of communications for the VA Greater L.A. Healthcare System. The VA is screening veterans and staffers and isolating those found to be at risk, Ruh said.

In San Diego County, a third cluster of COVID-19 patients was announced Thursday, as the local count of virus cases jumped from 80 to 105 and efforts to house vulnerable people in local hotels progressed.

Amid the continuing spread, Newsom on Thursday ordered Californians to stay at home, marking the first mandatory restrictions placed on the lives of all 40 million residents in the state’s fight against the novel coronavirus.

The governor’s action comes at a critical time in California, where more than 1,000 people have tested positive for the disease, and it appeared to be the most far-reaching directive of any issued by states battling the epidemic.
The mandatory order allows Californians to continue to visit gas stations, pharmacies, grocery stores, farmers markets, food banks, convenience stores, takeout and delivery restaurants, banks and laundromats. People can leave their homes to care for a relative or a friend or seek healthcare services.

It exempts workers in 16 federal critical infrastructure sectors, including food and agriculture, healthcare, transportation, energy, financial services, emergency response and others.

Newsom asked Californians to practice social distancing when performing such “necessary activities.”
“We’re going to keep the grocery stores open,” he said. “We’re going to make sure that you’re getting critical medical supplies. You can still take your kids outside, practicing common sense and social distancing. You can still walk your dog.”

Californians ordered to stay at home: Here are the new rules
No time frame was set for when the order would end. It was unclear exactly how far the order would reach in communities where some operations, such as schools, have not been closed down.

Officials hope telling people to stay home and restrict social interactions will slow the spread of the virus and ultimately prevent hospitals from being overrun with sick patients. The demand of all residents to stay at home marks the strongest escalation of the Newsom administration’s response to the virus and an unprecedented action in modern California history.

“A state as large as ours, a nation-state, is many parts, but at the end of the day, we’re one body. There’s a mutuality, there’s a recognition of our interdependence that requires of this moment that we direct a statewide order for people to stay at home,” Newsom said. “That directive goes into force and effect this evening and we are confident that the people of the state of California will abide by it, will do the right thing.”

Those who don’t abide by the order, administration officials said, could be subject to a misdemeanor.

The city of Los Angeles issued it own restrictive order, requiring all nonessential businesses to close, with companies able to operate only through work-at-home arrangements. The order also bans all public gatherings of any size outside homes.

“All businesses, including museums, malls, retail stores, for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations, must stop operations that require workers to be present in person,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said. “No public and private gatherings of any size that would occur outside of a single home will be allowed, with clear exceptions.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s letter to President Donald Trump on coronavirus assistance
The governor’s office declined to provide to The Times an explanation of the state’s projection that 25.5 million Californians will be infected with this virus. Instead, a spokesman for the governor said the state’s mitigation efforts could lower that estimate.

“Gov. Newsom has been honest about the threat of the virus and its impact on the health and welfare of Californians,” said Nathan Click, a spokesman for Newsom. “This projection shows why it’s so critical that Californians take action to slow the spread of the disease — and those mitigation efforts aren’t taken into account in those numbers. The state is deploying every resource at its disposal to meet this challenge, and we continue to ask for the federal government’s assistance in this fight.”

In a briefing Wednesday, the governor said the Navy hospital ship and two mobile hospitals would help the state care for an anticipated surge in patients. The governor said the state would need roughly 20,000 more beds if more than half of Californians come down with the coronavirus.

“That’s just one scenario plan. There’s others that are more modest. Some may, some cases [may] be more extreme,” Newsom said. “When you’re looking at getting an additional [19,000] to 20,000 beds in your system, you have to look at your existing surge capacity within the healthcare delivery system, and you have to look at procuring additional assets.”

The governor’s secretary of health and human services, Dr. Mark Ghaly, offered only a brief explanation Thursday of the methodology that went into the state’s projection of 25.5 million infected Californians, saying it was arrived at in consultation with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was developed a few weeks ago.

“We feel like we are well prepared because of that planning,” Ghaly said.
The tens of millions of COVID-19 cases the Newsom administration is modeling represent an exponentially faster rate of spread than has been seen in other countries. Worldwide, there are about 245,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus infections since the outbreak began late last year.

Though testing in California and the United States is still in its beginning phases, reaching 25.5 million positives in eight weeks would exceed even Italy’s rate of infection, where about 600 people per each 1 million have tested positive, though that rate is still in flux.