Capitol Alert
Trump praises California for its coronavirus curve. Newsom holds his breath
The White House praised California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday for early efforts against the spread of the coronavirus, pointing to pandemic models that indicate the state has, for now, successfully stopped the number of cases from sharply increasing.
Although early numbers indicate California may be slowing the rate of infection, however, Newsom has declined to declare California’s efforts to flatten the curve a success.
President Donald Trump echoed that caution at a briefing with reporters.
“They’ve done a good job, California. Now let’s see what happens, because we could see a spike,” he said. “I mean you don’t know. They could have a spike where all of a sudden it spikes upward.”
At the moment, the state has enough ventilators and hospital beds for those who need them, state officials say.
But Newsom says rapidly escalating hospitalization and intensive care unit rates for coronavirus patients show that Californians should continue to abide by stay-at-home orders.
“We’re in the middle of this,” Newsom said Monday. “I don’t want to say that it’s worked, but I will say that we have benefited in terms of our capacity to prepare.”
The virus would be taking a greater toll on the hospital system if not for the stay-at-home order issued nearly two weeks ago, which bought hospitals time to prepare, the Democratic governor said.
His administration still predicts the state will need 50,000 more hospital beds on top of the 75,000 that the hospital system already had before the coronavirus outbreak, with a peak anticipated around mid-May.
“We are very sober about what these trend lines are instructing over the next couple of weeks,” Newsom said.
At the briefing, Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, repeatedly used California as a sign of hope that the country could succeed in “flattening the curve” – or suppress the number of coronavirus cases and related deaths – to a projected 100,000-240,000 Americans nationwide.
“Washington State, early, about two weeks before New York or New Jersey – California a week before New York or New Jersey – really talked to their communities and decided to mitigate before they started seeing this number of cases. And now we know that makes a big difference,” Birx said. “If you wait till you see it, it’s too late.”
The projections cited by the White House on Tuesday indicate that, without action, the country could see up to 2.2 million deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“They brought together their communities and their health providers, and they put in strong mitigation methods and testing,” Birx said. “And you could see what the result in Washington State and California is. But without the continuation for the next 30 days, anything could change.”
Newsom – a longtime political adversary of the president – has been in frequent contact throughout the crisis with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, the head of the coronavirus task force.
Trump and Newsom have even discussed one of the major points of disagreement between Sacramento and the White House – housing policy and California’s homelessness crisis – in the context of the pandemic, Trump told reporters.
“It bothers Gavin,” Trump said, asked whether the administration was preparing to help California protect the homeless. “They have to be careful. They have a very big homeless population.”
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