Yahoo News California Coronavirus Update: Governor Gavin Newsom Spends Majority Of COVID-19 News Conference Talking About His Economic Achievements
Governor Gavin Newsom started his Wednesday coronavirus news conference by taking a page out of Donald Trump’s press conference playbook.
The governor began by recalling how he started his first business by writing to 14 people he knew and asking for start-up money.
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He then spent the next 45 minutes of his regular, hourlong COVID-19 press conference reviewing the economic accomplishments of his administration thus far.
Newsom talked about line item tax credits, small business loans, unemployment, housing capacity, eviction moratoriums, “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects, wildfire prevention, workforce training, a small business hiring credit, infrastructure grants, extending mortgage relief, incentivizing home construction, telework and bridging the digital divide.
Newsom spoke about the 100-member economic task force that had been created to provide industry guidance after COVID struck, name-dropping Tim Cook and Bob Iger. He thanked Secretary of State Alex Padilla. He thanked Kamala Harris. He thanked state legislative leaders for their partnership.
He quoted Voltaire on the dignity of work. He talked about the “time value of money.”
Finally, three-quarters of the way into his presentation, Newsom turned to the coronavirus, noting that “businesses can’t thrive in a world that’s failing.”
He said the state was reporting 11,645 new cases over the past 24 hours. That includes 6,212 backlogged cases.
Newsom said over the next 72 hours the much talked about backlogged numbers of new cases would be backdated to the appropriate dates.
Hospitalizations were down about 19 percent over the past 14 days. ICU admissions related to coronavirus were down 16 percent over the same period.
Newsom’s focus on business came after what can be said to be one of the worst weeks of his tenure, as news leaked out about a massive data failure in the state’s coronavirus data reporting system. The governor did not address the issue, nor hold one of his regular press conferences for nearly a week. His first comments came on Monday and, it seems, he sought on Wednesday to turn the page on the debacle.
Watch his Wednesday news conference below.
TUNE IN NOW. https://t.co/SUgIG8Nj4u
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) August 12, 2020
Tuesday marked the arrival of those much-discussed California coronavirus backlog numbers, which were created by errors on the state level.
The reported daily new case total in the state soared by nearly 5,000 infections from Monday to Tuesday.
On Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom said there were 7,751 new cases in the state. That’s a substantial drop from about 10,000 two weeks ago, just before the data errors began to take effect.
On Tuesday, the state reported 12,500 new cases, a curiously round number that is just 307 new cases shy from the state’s all-time daily high. That was 12,807, reported on July 22, just a week before the state’s reporting system was impacted by the errors of state officials.
Tuesday’s new cases were accompanied by the following disclaimer on the state COVID-19 dashboard: “Today’s case counts include backlogged cases that would have been reported in earlier days and weeks and are not an accurate representation of cases reported in the prior 24 hours.”
The state reported 109 new deaths on Tuesday, for a total of 10,468 since the pandemic began. Hospitalizations and ICU stays related to COVID were both down less than a percent.
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