First California death from coronavirus: Placer County patient dies
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Placer County officials reported Wednesday morning that a resident has died of the new coronavirus, the first death from the illness in California.
The fatality and growing number of cases, prompted California Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency over the rapidly spreading COVID-19 outbreak, which has stricken dozens of people up and down the state in 12 counties since last month.
The person was an elderly Rocklin resident with underlying health conditions, and it was the second confirmed case of COVID-19 in the county. The patient tested positive on Tuesday and had been isolated at Kaiser Roseville in “critically ill” condition.
According to health officials, the person was likely exposed to the the virus while overseas on a Grand Princess cruise ship that departed from San Francisco on a roundtrip voyage to Mexico between Feb. 11 and 21. Princess cruise line officials said he was 71 years old.
Princess Cruise announced Wednesday that a “small cluster of COVID-19 (coronavirus) cases in Northern California connected to our previous Grand Princess voyage” is currently being investigated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The patient began showing symptoms while on the cruise Feb. 19 and arrived in San Francisco on Feb. 21, said Placer County Health Officer Dr. Aimee Sisson during a Wednesday news briefing. They had “minimal community exposure” after returning but called 911 and arrived at the hospital by ambulance less than a week later.
The patient died early Wednesday.
“I want to express my sincere condolences to the loved ones of this patient,” Sisson said. “This death, and our second case, is a sobering reminder that while the vast majority of cases of COVID-19 worldwide have been mild, older persons and persons with underlying medical conditions are at increased risk of disease.”
Who else was exposed to coronavirus?
Ten Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers and five emergency responders who were exposed to the patient before they were put in isolation are now in quarantine. They are not exhibiting symptoms but are being quarantined and monitored, county officials said.
The Rocklin Fire Department in a news release said three of its employees were among the five emergency responders who made contact. Those three “were exposed after responding to a call for a non-respiratory issue on Feb. 27,” the news release said.
“The City and Fire Department are following federal, state and local health policies and remain ready to protect the citizens of Rocklin in an emergency,” Rocklin Fire Chief William Hack said in a prepared statement.
County health officials also said two American Medical Response emergency personnel were also exposed.
Placer County’s health department on Wednesday said it has advised 911 dispatchers in the county to increase screening questions that can help identify callers who may be experiencing respiratory symptoms and tell emergency crews if they should take extra precautions.
Placer County public health officials are working with Sacramento County health officials and the CDC to identify and contact other cruise passengers.
Though the patient who died in Placer County likely caught the virus from overseas travel, local health officials believe local transmission — cases where the origin of exposure is unknown — is likely in the future.
Other cruise passengers on the Grand Princess may have also been exposed to the virus.
Sonoma County officials reported another coronavirus case that originated from the same cruise ship earlier this week — the cruise ship is different from the Diamond Princess that docked in Japan last month, but both are operated by Miami-based Carnival.
‘Day late and a dollar short’
Suzi Schultz, 59, was among the passengers on the 10-day cruise from San Francisco to Mexico, along with her partner and her partner’s family.
“This is my first, and I will add, only cruise I will ever take,” Schultz told The Sacramento Bee on Wednesday.
Schultz, who lives in Santa Rosa, departed with her family on Feb. 11. She was wary from the beginning — the Diamond Princess cruise ship fiasco was still unfolding on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, with hundreds of ill passengers quarantined in Japan. She said she was surprised by how little the cruise line, operated by Miami-based Carnival, seemed to have heightened its screening system, but she trusted that they knew what they were doing.
After a relaxing week, Schultz and her family disembarked at Cabo San Lucas because of a separate medical issue in the family. She flew to San Diego and then to Sacramento before returning home. On Feb. 19, the day she landed in Northern California, she said she developed aches, pains and a sore throat.
Schultz was sick for about a week, she said, but didn’t equate it with anything more than maybe strep throat, at worst, since no cruise officials provided any notice about the potential spread of new coronavirus. But as news reports about the spreading sickness increased, so did her unease.
She tried getting information from the cruise ship company, but officials denied any cause for alarm. Calls to the health department went unreturned. She called her doctor, minimized her activity outside, and has since started feeling better. But Sonoma County health officials called her Wednesday and urged her to quarantine herself after learning of her situation from her doctor.
“I am less than confident,” Schultz said of the official response and communication about her potential exposure. “I think so much time has passed. There were so many people who were on that ship who have disembarked in many, many different locations.”
She also got an email at 1:34 a.m. from the cruise ship company. It was, she said, the first correspondence she’d gotten from them about the potential spread of the virus.
“I think that’s a day late and a dollar short,” she said.
California outbreak by the numbers
The Grand Princess ship was out to sea on a route to Hawaii via Mexico, but the cruise line company announced Wednesday it would be sailing the ship early back to San Francisco. Newsom told reporters Wednesday that the cruise ship is being held off the coast of California, as public health officials plan to airlift test kits to the ship to test passengers.
A total of 62 passengers who had been on the mid-February trip through Mexico stayed on the cruise ship to head to Hawaii, the company stated. Those passengers, as well as crew members who had close contact with them, were asked to stay in their cabins until a medical staffer screened them for the virus.
“All of us at Princess Cruises offer our sincerest and heartfelt condolences to the family and all who are impacted by this loss,” the company said in a statement.
In California, 53 people have tested positive for COVID-19, according to state health officials.
▪ Twenty-four of the cases were related to repatriation flights from Wuhan, China, and the Diamond Princess ship.
▪ Twenty-nine with the illness were not repatriated from China, they said; of those 12 of them were travel-related.
▪ Also of the 29 domestic cases, four were from so-called community exposure, 10 were from person-to-person exposure, which they said were mainly health care workers, and three remained under investigation.
An additional 9,400 or more people are self-monitoring, state officials said, after returning to the U.S. through airports in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Ten other patients being treated in the United States have died, all of them in Washington state. Nationwide, 138 Americans are confirmed to have COVID-19. Globally, more than 3,200 people have died and there are more than 94,800 cases.
All levels of government response
Placer County announced a public health emergency over the new coronavirus late Tuesday night in an effort to free up more local and state resources. The day before, the county announced its first COVID-19 case: a health care worker at a Vacaville hospital who had treated a woman later hospitalized with the nation’s first case of the virus from exposure in the community, rather than travel or contact with someone who recently traveled.
It remains unclear exactly where the person who died was infected with the novel coronavirus, said Dr. Chris Braden, deputy director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases.
“It’s certainly not clear that something that happened in Mexico was the source of the illness,” he told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “It may have been somebody on the boat. It’s not necessarily an exposure in Mexico. What we’re saying to people is really be very cognizant with any symptoms they have and report that to their doctor.”
“Jennifer and I extend our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones affected by this death in Placer County,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement Wednesday. “The state is working with federal officials to follow up on contact tracing of individuals that may have been exposed to provide treatment and protect public health.”
Millions of dollars in federal funding are now also flowing into California to bolster the state’s COVID-19 response: U.S. Health and Human Services will release $4.5 million to California in what it marked as initial funding to curb the virus’ spread.
“State and local governments are the backbone of our public health system. They have been essential partners in the ongoing work to contain and mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in the United States,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, in a statement released just before noon.
“The Trump administration is acting swiftly through every avenue we have to ensure state and local governments have the support they need to combat this outbreak.”
Sisson said Placer County health officials have brought in extra staff to help with retracing the steps and potential contacts infected persons might have made. She stressed on Wednesday that she still did not see evidence of person-to-person spread in the community.
“They all are associated with travel to this cruise to Mexico,” she said of the county’s cases. “So until I see evidence of local transmission I think it’s still worthwhile to try to contain COVID-19, and that would be identification, isolation and contact tracing of those cases.”
Sisson’s other message to the community was simple: “Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands.”
At a parking lot at Kaiser Roseville Jaysa Kaneff and her husband, Joel, were loading their two young children into their car. They spent the afternoon with their 18-month-old daughter, Jade, receiving some tests related to a medical condition the child has.
The couple said they were especially mindful about washing their hands and using hand sanitizer given the news about the COVID-19 death in the facility, but the girl’s care couldn’t keep them away.
“What she has going on is more important,” Jaysa Kaneff said.
They said they trusted the hospital to take steps to prevent the infection from spreading.
New coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, 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 CDC 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 include fever, cough and shortness of breath, which may occur two days to two weeks after exposure. The disease is especially dangerous for the elderly and others with weaker immune systems.
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 12:33 PM with the headline "First California death from coronavirus: Placer County patient dies."