Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

AUBURN, Placer County — A Placer County resident who may have contracted the new coronavirus while on a 10-day cruise from San Francisco died early Wednesday, and the ship on which he’d been a passenger is now being held off the coast of California while public health officials determine if anyone on board has been infected.

The death of the 71-year-old man is the first coronavirus fatality in California, and the 11th in the United States. After officials announced the death, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in California in response to the death, cruise ship situation and rising number of cases in the state.

The Placer County man was probably exposed to the virus on the Grand Princess, a Princess Cruises ship that left its home port in San Francisco for a trip to Mexico on Feb. 11, and returned on Feb. 21. But he — and another former passenger from Sonoma County — did not get diagnosed with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, until Monday, 10 days after they left the ship.

By the time public health authorities made the connection between the two ill former passengers and the ship, the Grand Princess was at sea again with a new group of about 2,500 passengers.

The ship left San Francisco for a 15-day trip to Hawaii about eight hours after it returned from the Mexico trip. Sixty-two of the current passengers had also been on the Mexico cruise. The ship was due back in San Francisco this Saturday but was called back early due to concerns over the coronavirus.

At least 21 people currently on the Grand Princess have symptoms of COVID-19 and public health officials are planning to airlift test kits to the ship, which is being held about a day’s voyage off the coast, Newsom said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

Newsom’s emergency declaration is meant to help the state qualify for resources, including federal aid, to help combat the spread of the virus. In the Bay Area, 33 cases of COVID-19 have been reported, including 10 in Santa Clara County just this week.

On Wednesday, the first cluster of COVID-19 was reported in Los Angeles County, with seven new cases. Statewide, 62 cases have been reported.

“Community spread is no longer just in the northern part of the state. It’s now in Southern California,” Newsom said. He said the state has entered the “next phase” of confronting the global coronavirus outbreak, and the emergency declaration is meant to rally more resources.

The Grand Princess will remain at sea until public health officials determine whether there is an outbreak on board and where the passengers can safely disembark. The ship may still dock at the Port of San Francisco this week, Newsom said.

“We’ll provide as much time as needed to secure the safety of everyone on board, and more broadly the community that could be impacted by thousands of people disembarking,” Newsom said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention learned this week of a “small cluster” of Northern California coronavirus cases that could be traced to the cruise ship. Sonoma County reported on Monday that a resident who had been on the Mexico cruise tested positive. The Placer County man also tested positive on Monday, and died Wednesday morning.

There were about 2,500 passengers on the trip to Mexico with the Sonoma and Placer county residents, Newsom said. About half of those people live in California. Everyone who was on that cruise is being contacted by local, state or federal public health authorities. CDC officials said an undisclosed number of passengers from the Mexico cruise have symptoms of COVID-19 and are being tested.

CDC officials noted that for passengers on the February trip, the 14-day incubation period will end on Friday. Those passengers are being asked to isolate themselves at home in the meantime and alert their doctors and local public health authorities if they have symptoms of COVID-19.

The Placer County health officer said the man who died first developed symptoms Feb. 19 while on the ship, and was still symptomatic when he passed through the Port of San Francisco upon return two days later. Public health officials said that people who came into “fleeting contact” with the individual were not at risk of infection, but anyone who was in close contact — within 6 feet, for extended periods of time — could be.

Another Princess Cruises ship — the Diamond Princess — had a large outbreak of coronavirus off the coast of Japan that ultimately infected more than 700 people out of about 4,000 passengers and staff who were on board at the time. Six people died in that outbreak.

With the Diamond Princess, passengers were forced to remain on the ship for weeks while authorities determined how to safely off-board them without putting the local community at risk. Several hundred American passengers eventually were evacuated and flown back to the U.S., where they were placed under quarantine.

Last month, the CDC began advising Americans to avoid travel on cruise ships in Asia; the epicenter of the global coronavirus outbreak is Wuhan, China. But investigators haven’t identified the source of the outbreak on the Grand Princess, said Dr. Christopher Braden, deputy director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases with the CDC.

The Grand Princess made four stops in Mexico on the February trip and four stops in Hawaii on the current trip, according to itineraries posted online.

“Where this person actually was infected, what the exposure is, is not clear. It’s certainly not clear that something in Mexico was the source of the illness,” Braden said at a Wednesday news conference in Placer County. “It may have been somebody else on the boat.”

Newsom said about 200 test kits — enough to test several hundred people — would be airlifted to the ship right away. The tests will likely be processed at the state health lab in Richmond, he said, and results should be available within a few hours.

Once the situation has been vetted on the ship, authorities with the CDC, the California Department of Public Health and the U.S. Coast Guard will develop a plan for meeting the Grand Princess when it docks, Newsom said.

“They’re not nearby, they’re not just right outside the Golden Gate, they’re not just sitting right off the pier,” Newsom said. “They’re quite a distance off the coast.”

The Placer County man who died was a resident of Rocklin and had underlying health problems, officials said. He returned home from his cruise on Feb. 21, and called 911 last Thursday when his symptoms worsened. The man was taken by ambulance to Kaiser Permanente in Roseville and treated in isolation.

He was tested for coronavirus on Sunday, two days after the CDC expanded testing criteria beyond people with a travel history to China or known exposure to someone who was infected. The positive result came back Monday.

In the five days between returning to San Francisco and going to the hospital, the man had “minimal community exposure,” Sisson said. People who had contact with the patient include 10 Kaiser health care workers and five emergency responders.

The man took a bus from San Francisco back home to Placer County after the Mexico cruise, and several passengers on that bus also are being monitored for potential illness, public health officials said.

“I no longer believe the risk to the general public from COVID-19 is low,” said Dr. Aimee Sisson, Placer County health officer, at a news conference in Auburn. “I urge Placer County residents to be vigilant and protect themselves from COVID-19.”

More than 150 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the United States as of Wednesday, according to the CDC. The worst U.S. outbreak is in Washington state, involving a long-term care facility near Seattle where 31 people have been infected and 10 have died.

“This death represents the first death in the state of California from COVID-19. It is a tragic milestone for our community,” Sisson said. “While we expected more COVID-19 cases and eventually deaths, this death in our community is a sobering reminder that while the vast majority of cases have been mild, older persons and persons with underlying medical conditions are at increased risk of serious disease.”

Erin Allday, Anna Bauman and Alexei Koseff are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com, anna.bauman@sfchronicle.com, alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @erinallday, @abauman2 mail, @akoseff