SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ San Francisco reported its first cases of the new coronavirus Thursday, as a cruise ship was being held off the coast as health officials screened those on board for the virus.
Health officials said the two patients are unrelated and have no travel history in areas hit by the coronavirus.
The Grand Princess cruise ship has now become a focus in California's fight against COVID-19 amid concerns that more people who were on board might be sick. It comes as the virus continues to spread, killing 10 people so far in Washington state, prompting a bipartisan spending bill to combat the virus in Washington, D.C., and closing schools in Italy and other countries.
In Washington state, the number of confirmed cases of the virus jumped Thursday to 70.
In California, the virus has been reported in 12 counties and has sickened more than 50 people. The Princess Cruises passenger is the first person to die in the state from the illness. Some have contracted the virus through "community spread" not connected to foreign travel.
An employee of an AT&T retail store in San Diego tested positive for the new coronavirus, the company announced Thursday.
The company on Wednesday closed and deep cleaned several stores that the employee or colleagues in close contact with the employee might have recently visited "out of an abundance of caution," AT&T said in a statement. The stores were slated to reopen on Thursday.
Princess Cruises said it was notified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the agency was investigating a small cluster of coronavirus cases in Northern California related to the cruise.
The company said that 62 guests who made the Mexico voyage remained aboard the Grand Princess for a subsequent trip to Hawaii. That trip was cut short and guests and crew members who may have come in close contact with the passenger who died were asked to remain in their cabins until they could be screened.
Those people and any others experiencing flulike symptoms or other respiratory distress were to be tested on Thursday, the cruise line said in a statement.
The U.S. Coast Guard planned to deliver kits to the ship via helicopter in the morning so the ship's medical team could administer the tests. The samples then would be flown to a lab in Richmond, Calif., for processing, Princess Cruises said.
Passengers on the vessel _ both current and those who may have been exposed earlier _ told the Los Angeles Times that the response to the outbreak by the company and health officials has been filled with missteps. In particular, passengers said that Princess Cruises was lax on health screening protocols prior to boarding and withheld information about the risks they faced, even as the ship's condition became international news.
Placer County is requesting that any other individuals who were on the cruise to Mexico to self-quarantine. County officials on Tuesday declared a local emergency in response to the outbreak.
The ship was supposed to depart for another cruise to Hawaii on Saturday, but the cruise line has canceled the voyage and said all guests will receive a full refund.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who declared a state emergency Wednesday, said he felt confident that the state can prevent the virus from being spread by passengers of the cruise who already had returned to California.
"We have the resources," Newsom said. "We have the capacity. By this evening, we will have contacted every county health official that has someone who came off this cruise. They will have their contact information and begin a process to contact those individuals."
Officials are trying to locate hundreds of other Californians who disembarked from the Grand Princess in San Francisco last month after the trip to Mexico to determine whether they also might have contracted the virus.
After visiting Hawaii on its current voyage, the ship canceled a stop in Baja California and was scheduled to return early to San Francisco on Wednesday before it was held offshore.
Officials in Nevada County, just north of Placer County, joined Los Angeles County and other areas of the state in declaring a local emergency amid the spread of the virus. Unlike L.A. County, which reported six news cases Wednesday, including a screener at Los Angeles International Airport, Nevada County has had no confirmed cases of COVID-19.
"These declarations enhance Nevada County's ability to proactively respond to local needs if or when a confirmed coronavirus case happens in Nevada County," Jill Blake, the county's public health director, said in a statement.
World Health Organization officials emphasized Thursday that it is not too late to beat back the spread of the virus.
Worldwide, there have been 95,265 cases reported globally and 3,281 deaths.
Parts of China _ where the outbreak originated _ have brought their daily new infection numbers down to the single digits, health officials said. Eight provinces have not reported any new cases in the last 14 days.
"This is a time for pulling out all the stops," WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "If we take the approach that there is nothing we can do, that will quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's in our hands.
"Ultimately how deadly this virus is will depend not only on the virus itself but how we respond to it," he said.
In a news conference Thursday, officials were asked about a prediction that 40% to 70% of the world will ultimately contract the coronavirus. Officials said they take all predictions into account, but China's progress in containing the virus and lowering case numbers makes that seem increasingly unlikely, said Mike Ryan, who heads the agency's emergencies program.
"There are obvious real things happening in the real world that contradict that," he said. "That's flying in the face of that prediction.
"We need to fight. We need to fight now," he said. "Our (direst) predictions will come true if we do nothing."
Officials emphasized that tried-and-true public health measures, like testing and isolation, are working to control the virus. Countries need to take proactive steps, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's acting head of emerging diseases.
"You need to look for all of your cases aggressively," she said.
Tedros said he was concerned that some countries have not taken the epidemic seriously enough or have decided there is nothing they can do about it. He said some countries' political commitment does not seem to match the level of threat faced globally. There must be strong leadership from the top, he said.
"This epidemic can be pushed back _ but only with a collected, coordinated and comprehensive approach that engages the entire machinery of government," Tedros said. "We're calling on every county to act with speed, scale and clear-minded determination."
