COVID-19 Task Force Update (April 27, 2020)

Dear KGI Community:

The KGI COVID-19 Task Force met during its regular Monday meeting this morning to review and evaluate recent information on the pandemic.

There are no significant updates for the KGI community at this time:

• We do not have a confirmed return to work date. We do not have a confirmed return to campus date for students. We will continue to review guidance by the State of California and Los Angeles County.
• A sub-committee has been created and is being led by Mark Bennett to design a return to campus plan (faculty, staff, and students). Once that plan is created and approved, it will be shared with the KGI community.

General News Updates:

Cases – Reported as of Summary Time

 

White House

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added six possible symptoms of coronavirus to its list, a step that reflects the broad variation and unpredictability in the way the illness can affect individual patients. CDC has updated its website to cite the following symptoms as possible indicators of Covid-19: chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, and new loss of taste or smell. Previously it had listed just three symptoms: fever, cough, and shortness of breath.
• Although the United States has the highest number of deaths on a global scale, deaths per capita remain lower than those in many European countries, notably Italy and Spain.
• The Trump administration unveiled a new strategy Monday to help states ramp up their capacity to test for coronavirus, stating that most of its work is done. The two documents are a testing “overview” and a testing “blueprint.” The first document, the testing overview, outlines eight responsibilities that it says belong to the federal government, and seven of these responsibilities are completed. The other document, a testing “blueprint,” describes what it calls a “partnership” between states, the federal government, and the private sector. The partnership puts most of the responsibility for funding, designing, and executing a coronavirus testing plan to individual states.

State of California

• The governor said California was “weeks, not months” away from modifying its stay-at-home order, but he noted that scenes like crowded beaches from the weekend could slow reopening efforts.
• Newsom is expected to provide further details on Tuesday on how businesses, schools, and child-care centers might be allowed to operate when they are permitted to reopen. That area is the fifth indicator in his six-pronged plan to determine how California can safely return to what Newsom called “modified normalcy.”
• The state is not yet able to test everyone, though certain asymptomatic people and people with mild symptoms can now be tested.
• Contact tracing is in development by some large tech firms, an effort that has raised privacy concerns. The premise is that smartphones could discreetly detect those who may have COVID-19 and nudge them to quarantine, blunting renewed outbreaks as Americans start to venture out.
• The technology, which Google and Apple plan to launch in mid-May, would enable an individual to have their phone track the Bluetooth signals emitted by the phones of every other person with whom they have come into close contact.
• If a person tests positive for COVID-19, an app provided by their public health department would send an alert to all other users of the app with whom the infected person had contact over the previous two weeks. Identities would not be revealed, just the day of the contact, how long it lasted, and the strength of the Bluetooth signal.

LA County

• A motion will be introduced at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting to establish a task force and move in the direction aimed at reopening the County. Efforts will also provide guidelines on operations for businesses.
• Over 123,737 people tested to date, 14% reporting positive.
• Of all COVID-19 patients in the county who have died from the virus, 91% had underlying health conditions
• L.A. County remains the epicenter of the viral outbreak in California with nearly 45% of all the state’s reported infections as of Sunday but just a quarter of the state’s population.
• The four key benchmarks that must be achieved before restrictions (“Safer at Home” orders) are lifted include increasing capacity in the health care system; ensuring protections for people at risk; increasing capability to test, isolate and trace the virus; and maintaining physical distancing.
• Officials now predict about 2 in 20 Angelenos, or 11% of the county, could contract the virus by Aug. 1 under the current level of physical distancing. That’s a substantial reduction from the model’s original estimate that 30% of county residents could be infected.

As a reminder, the most up to date information on KGI’s COVID-19 response can be found on the coronavirus website.

Be well,

Kelly Esperias
Vice President of Institutional Development

 

Back to kgi.edu/coronavirus page