LOS ANGELES — California officials are offering glimmers of optimism that the state is seeing progress in its fight against the coronavirus, even as people continue dying.
California has not seen the death toll of hot spots such as New York, where more than 4,000 have died. California has recorded more 450 deaths and more than 17,000 confirmed cases. And while the virus continues to spread rapidly in some places, including Los Angeles County, there are signs that its rate of growth is slowing in parts of the Bay Area.
Officials say the state’s strict stay-at-home rules are making a difference. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday offered a “sense of optimism,” to Californians about bending the coronavirus curve.
“It is bending, but it’s also stretching,” Newsom said.
Bending the curve means reducing the transmission of the virus to prevent a sudden and large spike of patients with COVID-19. Instead of a rapid surge, infections grow more gradually, essentially “stretching” out a bell curve over time, as Newsom said, to avoid overwhelming the health care system with more seriously sick patients than resources to treat them.
Newsom reported a 10.7% daily increase in patients who have tested positive for COVID-19, raising the total to 15,865 as of Tuesday. The governor reported gradual growth in hospitalizations from the virus to 2,611, up 4.1%, while patients receiving intensive care climbed just 2.1% to 1,108, he said.
The administration suspects an additional 2,796 Californians have been hospitalized with the virus, including 522 in intensive care, but are awaiting test results to confirm their diagnosis. Newsom said 374 Californians had died from COVID-19 as of Tuesday.
“These are not the double-digit increases we were seeing in hospitalization rates or ICU rates that we saw even a week or so ago,” Newsom said. “That’s not to suggest by any stretch of the imagination that we’ll continue to see these declines. It’s to only reinforce the importance of maintaining physical distancing and continuing our stay-at-home policy that has helped bend the curve in the state of California.”
But officials said California still has a long way to go.
Los Angeles County health officials confirmed 22 more coronavirus-linked deaths Tuesday, bringing the county’s total to 169, as the number of people testing positive for the illness nears 7,000.
There are 869 people hospitalized in the county with COVID-19. Of those, 43% are older than 65 and 18% are younger than 45. There are 132 people in intensive care.
Barbara Ferrer, L.A. County’s public health director, said 121 institutional settings — including nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and skilled-nursing facilities — are under investigation for potential outbreaks after reporting at least one case of the virus. The county’s death toll includes 37 residents of such facilities.
Ferrer took the extraordinary step of telling families it would be “perfectly appropriate” to pull loved ones out of long-term facilities for their safety. She said some families are able to care for an infirm loved one now because so many people are working from home. But she acknowledged the “horrible choice” faced by families who cannot care for family members at home.
Outbreaks also have been reported at nursing homes across California, alarming officials because the residents there are at higher risk of serious health problems or death.
Health officials in Sacramento County, which has a total of 525 cases and has seen 21 people die from complications of the virus, extended an order on Tuesday for residents to stay home for three more weeks amid the outbreak.
The order, which is set to expire May 1, loosened some restrictions — namely on funerals and the ability for real estate agents to show homes for sale — while tightening restrictions on gatherings. The previous version of the county’s ordinance allowed up to six non-relatives to gather inside a home. The new order prohibits all nonessential gatherings of any number of individuals.
“This new Public Health Order has additional clarification and directives, but the main point remains clear: people in Sacramento County must keep social distancing to the max,” Dr. Peter Beilenson, the county’s director of health services, said in a prepared statement. “The single most important thing everyone can do to beat this is to stay home.”
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced an order Tuesday evening requiring all residents to wear a face covering when visiting the majority of essential businesses, in hopes that it will protect workers and slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Effective Friday, residents must wear a mask, bandanna or other type of covering over their noses and mouths when in grocery stores, pharmacies, hardware stores, coin-operated laundry services, restaurants, hotels, taxis, ride-hail vehicles and several other essential businesses.
Workers must also wear masks.
Newsom said Tuesday that California has secured a monthly supply of 200 million N95 respiratory and surgical masks to help protect health care workers and other essential personnel at the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic in the state.
“We decided enough’s enough. Let’s use the power, the purchasing power of the state of California, as a nation-state,” Newsom told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. “We did just that. And in the next few weeks, we’re going to see supplies, at that level, into the state of California and potentially the opportunity to export some of those supplies to states in need.”
The masks are among the most coveted supplies needed in hospitals and medical facilities that are treating people infected with the coronavirus amid a nationwide shortage of personal protective equipment for health care workers. They will come from a consortium of suppliers, including a California nonprofit, a California manufacturer with suppliers in Asia and from a company sterilizing used masks, according to Nathan Click, the governor’s spokesman.
Newsom is working with hospitals, health care providers and manufacturers to procure and staff 50,000 new hospital beds — in addition to the more than 70,000 currently in the state’s health care system — to adequately care for the anticipated rise in patients.
Severe cases of COVID-19 can cause fluid to build up in the lungs, leading to shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. Mark Ghaly, the state’s secretary of Health and Human Services, said he expects California to need 15,000 to 20,000 more ventilators, machines that push air in and out of the lungs, to care for seriously ill patients. The state currently has roughly 11,000 ventilators, Newsom said.
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