California Governor Gavin Newsom late Wednesday declared a statewide emergency due to coronavirus. Washington and Florida had already declared emergencies, and Hawaii also joined them Wednesday.
Federal authorities announced an investigation of the Seattle-area nursing home at the center of an outbreak of the new coronavirus as the US death toll climbed to 11, including the first fatality outside Washington state.
Officials in California's Placer County, near Sacramento, said Wednesday an elderly person who tested positive after returning from a San Francisco-to-Mexico cruise had died.
The victim had underlying health problems, authorities said. California Gov. Gavin Newsom late Wednesday declared a statewide emergency due to coronavirus. Washington and Florida had already declared emergencies, and Hawaii also joined them Wednesday.
Washington also announced another death, bringing its total to 10. Most of those who died were residents of Life Care Center, a nursing home in Kirkland, a suburb east of Seattle.
At least 39 cases have been reported in the Seattle area, where researchers say the virus may have been circulating undetected for weeks.
Vice President Mike Pence was expected to meet with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee near Olympia on Thursday.
Seema Verma, head of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the agency is sending inspectors to Life Care along with experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to figure out what happened and determine whether the nursing home followed guidelines for preventing infections.
Last April, the state fined Life Care USD 67,000 over infection-control deficiencies following two flu outbreaks that affected 17 patients and staff.
An unannounced follow-up inspection in June determined that Life Care had corrected the problems, Verma said.
Meanwhile, public officials in Washington came under pressure to take more aggressive steps against the outbreak, including closing schools.
