After another high COVID-19 death total, Newsom expands on local approach to reopening

Gov. Gavin Newsom said 93 more people who tested positive for COVID-19 died in California Thursday.

During his Friday press briefing, Newsom announced the death toll for one of the deadliest days in the state since the pandemic began. The total is 22 fewer coronavirus deaths than the single-day high of 115, which was revealed during the governor’s press briefing a day earlier.

The California COVID-19 death toll reached 1,562 at the end of the day Thursday while a 5% increase in the number of positive tests brought the total case count to 39,254. The number of confirmed cases in the state is expected to top 40,000 on Friday.

“Those should be sobering and cautionary statistics as it relates to the desire that we all have to get back to some semblance of normalcy and answer the question of when that will happen,” Newsom said.

For the second consecutive day, Newsom mentioned the California Department of Public Health noticed positive signs in the state’s COVID-19 data despite the increases in cases and deaths. The number of patients who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus remained stable at 3,344 and the number of patients requiring care in ICU beds increased by 1 percent to 1,216.

“Hospitalizations were flat yesterday, no statistical growth,” Newsom said Friday. “You saw yesterday’s decline from the previous day and today we’re seeing with that decline, a flattening. So some stability. We continue to say stability in our models, but particular stability in hospitalizations, that’s good news.”

Newsom also made reference to “persons under investigation,” who are patients that are believed to have the coronavirus but have not been tested or not received test results yet. The governor said the number of “PUIs” in hospitals and ICU units around the state decreased from Thursday, when there were just north of 1,600 patients under investigation hospitalized, including slightly more than 300 in ICU beds.

“Some encouraging signs, but we’re not by any stretch of the imagination in a position to say those six indicators with which we make our determination about the future of our stay-at-home orders that any new lights are yet green,” Newsom said.

Newsom outlined the six indicators he and other state officials are monitoring to determine when it will be safe to reopen specific parts of the state’s economy during an April 14 news conference. On Wednesday, the governor detailed the state’s plans for one of the indicators — expanding coronavirus testing — and discussed a goal of testing more than 60,000 people in California on a daily basis beginning in May.

During that press briefing, Newsom also announced elective surgeries could begin to be scheduled after California hospitals had ample time to increase bed capacity in the event of a COVID-19 surge.

The governor did not outline any additional steps the state plans to take to ease the shelter-in-place restriction temporarily set to expire May 3, but he did indicate there would be a “local” approach to reopening the state’s economy.

“I recognize that despite (California) being a state, it is many parts,” Newsom said. “And that means we recognize the incredible imperative and importance of recognizing regionalism and how local conditions are distinctive from one another.”

Newsom noted how the total number of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, ICU numbers and deaths are “in the aggregate” for the state and acknowledged certain parts of the state are dealing with larger outbreaks than others.

“When we consider the loosening of our stay-at-homer orders, we will consider local conditions,” Newsom said. “We will consider those things not only from the perspective of the spread of the virus, not only from the perspective of the number of deaths and trend lines, but also in terms of our broader capacity.”

The governor added that hospital capacity, physical capacity and human resource capacity to care for COVID-19 patients will play a role in local jurisdictions making determinations on when and how they will reopen parts of their economies.