SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KRON) — California now has more confirmed cases of the coronavirus than any state in the country.
The CDC is now sending a team of people to the state.
Governor Gavin Newsom is not yet ready to call a state of emergency as California ramps up its response to the coronavirus.
As of Thursday, 33 people tested positive for the virus in the state. Five of those patients were transported to other states.
California health centers are now treating the rest and bracing for the numbers to rise.
“This is a fluid situation and the risk to the general public remains low,” Dr. Sonia Angell, director of California Department of Public Health, said.
State leaders and health officials are trying to put the public at ease as more cases of coronavirus are confirmed in California.
The state is now monitoring more than 8,000 people for the virus.
“We are not overreacting but not are we under-reacting to the anxiety many people have,” Newsom said.
One of the latest cases confirmed in Northern California is from an unknown source. Health officials say it could be the first community transmission of coronavirus, the first of its kind in the country.
The patient is from Solano County — the home of Travis Air Force Base, where the federal government and California have worked to treat people possibly infected on cruise ships or in China.
But officials say they don’t believe there is a connection between the patient and the base.
“We currently have people in the field working at the local, state and CDC investigating the cases and taking action,” Angell said. “They’re contacting any individuals exposed and they’re isolating them.”
The CDC is now promising to send California more testing kits and says it will update its protocols after the agency took four days to test the patient.
California’s governor says more kits are on the way after the CDC originally provided 200. The CDC is also sending 10 officials to to help with testing in California.
“It wasn’t just the lack of test kits, but the lack of ability to utilize those test kits,” Newsom said. “Now we’ll be able to utilize them, and we’ll be the recipient of an exponential increase in those test kits and more testing locations will be available.”
Governor Newsom said California will continue to work with the federal government to treat patients who are possibly at risk of the virus.
The governor even said his administration is working to identify even more areas to continue this work across the state.
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Via Coronavirus | KRON4 https://www.kron4.com
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