Coronavirus recap: Weekend brings California school closures, cruise updates and SNL skit

Mar. 9--From becoming the butt of a "Saturday Night Live" joke to the region's largest school district closing all campuses this week, Northern California has been consumed by all things coronavirus.

New developments regarding the fast-spreading illness, formally referred to as COVID-19, did not slow down over the weekend.

Gov. Gavin Newsom urged the elderly and those with health conditions to stop taking cruises, while the Grand Princess -- a large vacation cruise ship with about 2,400 passengers and 1,100 crew members on board -- prepares to dock Monday in Oakland.

To get caught up, here are updates on some of the major developments from late last week and through the weekend as confirmed infections, closures and cancellations related to the coronavirus continue to mount.

Elk Grove Unified cancels class, moves spring break

Elk Grove Unified School District will "close its schools, cancel classes and any student-related activities from (Saturday), March 7 -- March 13, 2020," the district announced Friday in a letter, which also noted that no student or staff has yet tested positive for COVID-19.

The school district moved up its spring break, which had been scheduled for April, to this week to avoid losing school days. EGUSD, which serves about 64,000 students among 67 schools, is the fourth-largest school district in the state and the biggest in Northern California.

The district's decision to cancel student-related activities along with classes initially put an end to the Sheldon High School varsity boys basketball team's run in the state playoffs. Slated to play Dublin in Saturday's semifinal of the CIF Northern California Open Division Regional tournament, the game was scratched and the California Interscholastic Federation initially indicated that Dublin would advance due to Sheldon withdrawing.

Now, it appears that the game could be back on. The CIF in a statement Sunday said it is working with health experts and EGUSD on a plan to put Sheldon back in the Open Division championship semifinal, with a proposed start time of 7 p.m. Tuesday at Dublin.

"The EGUSD has stated that it should be providing the CIF with updated information regarding its school's ability to continue in the tournament," the federation's statement said. "The CIF will then assess the updated information."

Canceling school and school activities at EGUSD was a contentious decision that made waves in the community. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, Sacramento County health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson and other local leaders faced a crowd of angry parents and student athletes, especially those associated with Sheldon, who packed a Sunday press conference to argue their case.

A Change.org petition that has been circulating since the weekend, asking EGUSD to consider alternatives to shifting spring break up to this week, had received more than 2,600 signatures as of Monday morning.

"EGUSD can not move a date that has been on calendar for the entire school year, especially in such short notice," the petition read, proposing solutions such as tacking on an additional school week at the end of the year.

The Sacramento County Public Health Department in a weekend news release following the EGUSD announcement said there is "no immediate risk and therefore no recommendation from SCPH that any individual school or school district needs to close down," and health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson said county authorities "respect" the district's decision, but that he did not see the district's closing as a "tipping point." Beilenson also said during Sunday's news conference that the cancellation decision was "kind of fast-track."

Newsom, though, in a weekend statement warned that additional school closures are likely throughout the state in the coming weeks as the coronavirus continues to spread.

What's the latest on the Grand Princess cruise ship?

The vacation cruise ship, which has been lingering for days off the coast of California with 2,400 passengers and 1,100 crew members on board, will dock Monday at the Port of Oakland, state officials announced over the weekend. A more exact time frame for the docking has not been announced.

Of 46 who were tested after lab kits were airlifted onto the vessel last week, 21 were confirmed positive for COVID-19, according to state emergency officials.

Passengers will disembark and be taken to hospitals or placed into quarantine, while crew will be quarantined on the ship, according to a statement by the state Office of Emergency Services.

None will be released directly into the general public: The sickest patients will be taken directly to hospitals; California residents will be taken to Travis Air Force Base near Fairfield or Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in the San Diego area for 14-day quarantine; and other residents will be quarantined at facilities in other states. Roughly 1,000 of the passengers are Californians.

State officials said Oakland was chosen because it has docking facilities large enough to handle the large ship and because the "location was the easiest to seal off, securely move passengers toward their isolation destinations and protect the safety of the public."

The Grand Princess initially went into limbo, returning early from a planned voyage to Hawaii, after it emerged that multiple passengers from the ship's trip to Mexico that disembarked in San Francisco on Feb. 21, had contracted the virus. One of those patients, a 71-year-old Placer County man, died last week, becoming the state's first coronavirus-related death.

Gov. Newsom to elderly: Don't go on a cruise

Speaking in Oakland on Sunday, Newsom said he "would highly recommend, almost demand, that you not go on a cruise" if you are elderly or have a "preexisting condition." The U.S. State Department in a Sunday statement warned all Americans to avoid cruises.

While detailing protocols involved with receiving the Grand Princess and the offboarding and quarantine of its thousands of passengers, Newsom said the state does not have the capacity to handle many more similar outbreak incidents.

Sacramento County expands coronavirus testing

Beilenson, the county health chief, said Sunday that physicians will benefit from increased testing capacity starting Monday, when LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics will have approval to perform local analyses.

According to Beilenson, the county had been constrained to 20 tests per day due to a lack of available lab kits from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"It's clearly a shortcoming of the CDC, in terms of not having enough tests out there," Beilenson said.

Coronavirus 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 the disease 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 of the virus that causes COVID-19 include fever, cough and shortness of breath, which may occur two days to two weeks after exposure. Most develop only mild symptoms, but some people develop more severe symptoms, including pneumonia, which can be fatal. The disease is especially dangerous to the elderly and others with weaker immune systems.

Testing is generally performed on those experiencing symptoms, or those with known exposure to the coronavirus via recent travel to countries with a high volume of cases, such as China, Italy or most recently the Grand Princess cruise ship.

Stock market plummets

Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened Monday on a 1,300-point plunge, while the S&P 500 futures market indicated a 5 percent drop, CNBC reported, triggering a halt in trading.

The New York Federal Reserve pledged Monday to boost the amount of money offered to banks for short-term funding needs, according to the network.

Fears are rising that production delays and economic slowdowns could spark a recession, and investors are turning to U.S. Treasury bonds and gold in search of stability, NBC News reported.

Daniel Craig visits 'Modesto' for wacky SNL sketch

Kate McKinnon and host Daniel Craig starred in a soap opera parody for "Saturday Night Live," set in a Modesto that looks and feels nothing like the real city, as a pair of lovers who cannot keep their hands off of each other. Except in this world of COVID-19, they have to.

The premise of the gag is that the coronavirus outbreak has affected filming of a fictional soap titled "The Sands of Modesto," forcing the actors to take extreme precautions to avoid actual physical contact as they canoodle.

At one point, Craig caresses McKinnon's cheek from across the couch using a prosthetic arm on a 4-foot-long pole. At another, the two pull up a large glass screen and stick it between them so that they can "kiss" passionately through it.

Modesto inaccuracies aside, the skit could dust up some mild debate about whether SNL writers are making light of a potentially deadly virus, or making fun of California's response to the outbreak, or just making the most of the situation as a stage for physical comedy. But most would probably agree that there are more pressing matters at hand.

Where do the coronavirus numbers stand?

As of Monday morning, a map and tally of confirmed coronavirus cases maintained by Johns Hopkins University shows more than 111,000 worldwide, the bulk coming from mainland China, where there are more than 80,000 cases, and more than 7,000 in each of South Korea, Italy and Iran. The global death total is near 3,900.

The United States has had close to 550 infections reported across 34 states, with California and Washington state making up about 25 percent of the nationwide total. At least 22 people have died of the coronavirus in the U.S.

The California Department of Public Health website shows a count of 114 positive cases and one death in California as of Sunday morning. Washington state reports 136 confirmed cases, of which at least 18 have died, as of 4 p.m. Sunday.

Bee reporters Cathie Anderson, Tony Bizjak, Sophia Bollag, Marcos Breton, Joe Davidson, Vincent Moleski, Sawsan Morrar and Don Sweeney contributed to this report.

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