In a bid to dramatically boost the number of health care workers fighting the deadly coronavirus spreading across the Bay Area and beyond, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announced a plan to temporarily bring both recently retired health care workers and students who are about to graduate as doctors and nurses into the workforce.
Newsom’s announcement came as Bay Area health officials confirmed that they would be extending the region’s stay-at-home order until at least the end of April, and the number of confirmed coronavirus cases across the state surpassed the 7,000 mark.
Newson’s health care moves are a race against time to prepare for a surge in coronavirus patients and avoid the desperate battle hospitals are waging in New York and New Jersey.
Newsom joined nearly a dozen governors across the country, including in New York, Florida, Texas and Virginia, who have moved to loosen regulations in recent days to allow recent retirees and nursing students to join the workforce.
While California has 766,000 medical professionals, the state has the capacity to increase ranks by at least 37,000 by enlisting those who recently retired or are in the process of getting their medical licenses and degrees, according to the governor. Through June, the state will ease licensing requirements to take on the new recruits.
“The next few weeks are going to be critical in the state of California,” Newsom said, encouraging those who can to “step up and sign up” at healthcorps.ca.gov. “In the next few weeks, we’re going to be looking to flex and surge and do more together to meet this moment.”
Nursing students such as Zeeshan Mehmood reacted to the governor’s urgent call to action with excitement and trepidation — even if it means starting his journey as a nurse during a frightening pandemic.
“It’s a job lined up and it’s paid. That’s great,” said Mehmood, a senior nursing student at Dominican University in San Rafael. “Yes, it does make me nervous and it does make me scared, but this is your reality as a nurse. This can happen. There can be an outbreak when I’m a nurse, and I’m going to have to deal with it. This is a sensible solution at this point in time.”
In California, the number of hospitalized patients is beginning to tick up.
As of Monday, state officials reported that 1,432 people have been hospitalized due to the disease — or roughly double the number from four days ago. And there are 597 people in intensive care unit beds — or about triple the 200 who were in those beds four days ago.
Those numbers are the most important to watch, officials say, because a shortage and delay in testing has led to a serious undercount in how many Californians are suffering from COVID-19. By Monday afternoon, there were more than 7,350 confirmed cases and 146 deaths related to the disease in the Golden State, according to the total cumulative cases reported by counties.
Silicon Valley remained one of the hardest hit areas in the state. Due to a “reporting delay,” the total number of confirmed cases in Santa Clara County spiked by more than 200 on Monday to 848 confirmed cases and 28 coronavirus-related deaths. San Francisco reported 374 cases, San Mateo County 309, Contra Costa 187, Alameda 283, and Marin 93.
And an alarming cluster of cases has grown into a crisis at a San Francisco long-term care facility. City officials announced on Monday that an outbreak at Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, home to more than 750 of the city’s most vulnerable residents, had worsened as nine staff members and two residents have tested positive for the virus. Infection control nurses and epidemiologists from the state and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been sent to San Francisco to help deal with the outbreak, officials said.
“The situation will escalate,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said at a virtual news conference Monday. “I’m grateful for what we’ve received, but it’s not going to be enough when it comes to Laguna Honda Hospital.”
Newsom said Monday finding enough “PPE,” or personal protective equipment, for medical workers on the front lines continues to be a challenge. As of Monday, the governor said, the state had distributed 32.9 million N95 masks, adding that more PPE comes in “every couple of days.”
Still, he implored residents with even broken or half-completed ventilators to reach out.
“We’ll take ’em, folks,” he said, adding that Silicon Valley companies such as Bloom Energy, which fix and distribute broken ventilators from the federal stockpile, are working “miracles.”
In a live-streamed interview shortly after the news conference with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, Newsom said, “If there’s any anxiety I have on the supply-side of things, it’s the vents,” referring to ventilators.
The state, he added, had identified roughly 4,500 of the 10,000 ventilators it expects to need in the coming weeks. The state also has ordered 101 million more N95 masks, he said. Zuckerberg and Chan have said they will commit $25 million in stipends to help health care workers with child care costs, transportation and hotels for those isolated from their families.
As Bay Area officials announced the extension of the region’s stay-at-home order on Monday, one Californian took to social media to tell her personal story of COVID-19 and remind residents to heed the precautionary measures instituted by public health officials.
Adrienne Hopper Williams wants the death of her 81-year-old mother to be a “wake-up call” to anyone who might still be reluctant to accept COVID-19’s danger. Hopper Williams’ mother, Barbara Johnson Hopper, of Oakland, died in isolation at a hospital on March 26.
“You do not want your loved one to die like this — with people who have to cover every inch of their bodies to come and care for them — not being able to hold their hand and be with them when they take their final breath,” Williams wrote on Facebook. “… Take heed, I would have never in a million years thought that something like this could happen to my family. But it did. And it can happen to yours, too, if you are not safe. Stay home. Don’t let this be your story, too!”
The governor declined during his news conference to go into detail on some of his team’s modeling regarding how many Californians are infected, and he sidestepped a question regarding how well social distancing and the statewide stay-at-home order is working.
Such modeling and predictions rely heavily on testing for the virus, which has been limited in California and elsewhere in the country. “The biggest backlog is swabs,” Newsom said.
“I don’t live on the basis of economic forecasts any more than health care forecasts. I live on the basis of our capacity to bend curves and change expectations by changing behavior,” Newsom said. “The power and potency as individuals to radically change these projections resides in each and every one of us, in each and every decision we make, each and every single day.”
