California needs to increase coronavirus testing ‘exponentially,’ Newsom says. But can we do it?

As many Californians cheered Gov. Gavin Newsom’s unveiling of a plan for eventually lifting coronavirus shelter-in-place orders, details of the efforts needed to put those plans in action that began to emerge Wednesday served as a reminder that it will take a lot of time — and a surge in coronavirus testing — before the state begins to reopen.

At a press conference Wednesday, Newsom said he would like to see California double the number of tests for COVID-19 that it is conducted each day by the end of April and to continue a massive expansion of testing through the summer as the state moves toward reopening public life.

But experts say that building out a surveillance system for identifying people who have contracted the deadly coronavirus and tracing the contacts they have made will require a massive mobilization of people and resources in every corner of the state.

“By no stretch of the imagination are we out of the woods,” Newsom said. “We need to maintain our vigilance, we need to maintain the path that we are on — a path that is producing results. But, again, we are not yet at a place we need to be so that we can start reopening.”

Public health officials reported 84 new deaths from coronavirus statewide on Wednesday, bringing the toll in California to 878. According to data compiled by this news organization, 27,036 people have tested positive for coronavirus in California, an increase of 1,312 from the previous day.

In the Bay Area, San Francisco passed 1,000 confirmed coronavirus cases Wednesday, reporting 26 new positive tests for a total of 1,013, as well as two deaths, bringing its total to 17.

Alameda County officials announced 13 new deaths from COVID-19 over a two-day span, for a total of 36, while its number of confirmed cases rose to 962. Santa Clara County saw five new coronavirus deaths and 127 confirmed cases over two days, for a total of 1,793 confirmed cases and 65 deaths. Both counties had problems with their health databases that kept them from releasing figures Tuesday.

Contra Costa County reported 15 confirmed coronavirus cases and two new deaths Wednesday, while San Mateo County officials announced 26 new cases but no deaths.

Across California, labs analyzed 12,200 coronavirus tests on Tuesday, Newsom said, surpassing a goal set by a state testing task force of doing 10,000 tests per day by mid-April. The task force’s next goal is to reach 25,000 tests per day by the end of the month, Newsom said, “and then to grow exponentially from there into May and June.”

He did not say how many tests the state will need to conduct through the summer or how many will be needed to ultimately lift the state’s shelter-in-place order.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly said Wednesday that the state’s labs currently have the capacity to analyze up to 94,000 tests per day and were increasing that capacity with new equipment. Neither Ghaly nor Newsom specified how many of those were tests would be for COVID-19, as opposed to separate tests for antibodies present in people who have been previously infected by the virus but recovered.

Increasing the state’s testing capacity to the level needed to consider easing social-distancing restrictions will be a challenge, said George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology at UC San Francisco. The state will need to obtain enough testing kits to collect many tens of thousands of samples each day. And it will need more people and equipment to run the tests, as well as to collect samples at testing sites statewide.

“There are lots of places it could go awry,” Rutherford said. “It will be a huge lift.”

Beyond the actual tests — which have been in short supply — Rutherford added that California likely will need to enlist thousands of workers to conduct contact tracing, identifying the people who have come into contact with individuals who tested positive for the virus and may have been exposed.

San Francisco officials announced plans for a contract tracing program there Wednesday, which will be conducted with help from University of California San Francisco and software company Dimagi. Members of an outreach team will follow up with COVID-19 patients’ contacts via text and calls for two weeks to track their symptoms confidentially, San Francisco Public Health Department Director Grant Colfax said.

The city, which is home to just under 900,000 of California’s nearly 40 million residents, anticipates the effort will require about 150 outreach staffers in total. About 50 people, including medical school students and staff with the city attorney’s office, have been trained for the program so far.

“This capability, this capacity, will enable us to move forward as a city now and after the shelter in place is lifted,” Colfax said.

When and how those orders might be relaxed was still up in the air Wednesday.

Officials in Santa Cruz and Marin counties — two coastal areas that have instituted particularly tight restrictions on beaches and parks in an effort to deter visitors — indicated this week that revisions to the Bay Area shelter-in-place directives could kick in starting May 4, when the current order expires. Santa Cruz County Public Health Officer Gail Newel said local parks and beaches are on track to reopen Thursday.

Laine Hendricks, a spokeswoman for Marin County, said conversations are happening “constantly” among Bay Area public health officials about next steps but that no decisions have been made as to whether the current order will be extended or what restrictions, if any, might be lifted.

“I don’t think we’ve come to any conclusion on either part of that,” Hendricks said.

Meanwhile, the shut-down order’s economic impact continued to widen Wednesday, as Newsom announced 2.7 million state residents have filed for unemployment benefits over the past four weeks.

The wave of new filings has jammed the lines of Employment Development Department call centers for unemployment inquiries and requests, leading state officials to expand those centers’ hours. They now will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week, up from just four hours per day on weekdays.

California also will be the first state to provide financial assistance for undocumented immigrant workers affected by the pandemic. Newsom said Wednesday that the state has formed a public-private partnership to distribute $125 million in cash benefits to undocumented workers, including $75 million in state funds that will issue one-time payments of $500 to 150,000 undocumented individuals. A consortium of philanthropic groups has pledged to contribute $50 million.

Staff writers Joseph Geha, George Avalos, and Kerry Crowley contributed reporting.