LATEST, April 26, 4:09 p.m. Five new coronavirus deaths were reported in the Bay Area on Sunday.

Four deaths were reported in Alameda County and one death was reported in Santa Clara County, increasing its total to 100. The state of California reached 1,706 deaths in all, according to data from John Hopkins University.

New coronavirus cases were reported in eight Bay Area counties:

-- Alameda County saw the largest increase in additional cases with 67 reported, bringing its total to 1,468

-- San Francisco County reported 54 cases to increase its total to 1,408

-- Santa Clara County reported 44 cases to increase its total to 2,084

-- Contra Costa County reported 12 cases to increase its total to 817

-- Marin County reported 11.cases to increase its total to 223

-- Monterey County reported 14 cases to increase its total to 183

-- Santa Cruz County reported five cases to increase its total to 120

-- Sonoma County reported one additional case to increase its total to 218.

April 25, 3:56 p.m. A Santa Clara woman who was recently declared the first U.S. death related to coronavirus suffered a massive heart attack, according to an exclusive report by The Chronicle.

Patricia Dowd of Santa Clara, Calif., died of COVID-19 on Feb. 6, several weeks before the United States declared its first novel coronavirus death, according to earlier autopsy results.

According to a Bay Area forensic pathologist contacted by The Chronicle to review the autopsy results, Dowd's heart "burst open."

"There's something abnormal about the fact that perfectly normal heart has burst open," said Dr. Judy Melinek. "The heart has ruptured. Normal hearts don't rupture.

"This heart ruptured or tore open because of an infection of the heart muscle caused by the coronavirus," Melinek said.

April 25, 2 p.m. Seven new coronavirus deaths were reported across the Bay Area on Saturday.

Four deaths were reported in Alameda County, two deaths were reported in Contra Costa County and one death was reported in Santa Clara County. All three counties also reported additional cases, with Alameda County reporting 36 new cases to increase its total to 1,437, Contra Costa County reporting 19 new cases to increase its total to 805, and Santa Clara County reporting 22 new cases to increase its total to 2,040.

April 25, 11:00 a.m. The number of global COVID-19 deaths topped 200,000 according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The United States, with over 53,000 deaths, makes up a quarter of deaths worldwide.

April 25, 9:50 a.m. New cases of the novel coronavirus were reported in San Francisco and San Mateo counties Saturday.

San Francisco reported 14 additional cases to bring its total up to 1,354, and San Mateo reported an additional 30 cases to reach 1,019. San Mateo is the fourth Bay Area county to cross the 1,000 case threshold.

No new deaths were reported in either county. The death toll in San Francisco is 22, and the death toll in San Mateo is 41.

April 25, 9:00 a.m. After a significant decline in the number of Bay Area patients hospitalized due to the coronavirus last week, numbers did not change much this week.

Here are the previous 10 days' worth of data reflecting the total number of confirmed and suspected COVID-19 patients hospitalized across the nine counties that comprise the San Francisco Bay Area:

- Wednesday, April 15: 740 (2.3 percent decrease from previous day)

- Thursday, April 16: 673 (9.1 percent decrease from previous day)

- Friday, April 17: 674 (0.1 percent increase from previous day)

- Saturday, April 18: 617 (8.5 percent decrease from previous day)

- Sunday, April 19: 606 (1.8 percent decrease from previous day)

- Monday, April 20: 619 (2.1 percent increase from previous day)

- Tuesday, April 21: 640 (3.4 percent increase from previous day)

- Wednesday, April 22: 629 (1.7 percent decrease from previous day)

- Thursday, April 23: 659 (4.8 increase from previous day)

- Friday, April 24: 610 (7.4 percent decrease from previous day)

For reference, April 7 marked the day of the most reported hospitalizations with 831. The number of patients in intensive care units also has not changed much over the past 10 days, with a high of 235 on April 23 and a low of 205 on April 19.

This slow "long tail" of decline in the number of hospitalizations and deaths is in line with what UCSF epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford predicted last week.

“If this were a totally unperturbed biological system, there’s some logic in expecting to see a symmetrical expansion and contraction of infection," he said. "But this is not an unperturbed biological system. We are doing all sorts of things to limit transmission, whether it's shelter in place, wearing masks, eliminating transmission in hospitals, all the things we’re doing to screw up the virus. As a result, the curve is going to have a jagged peak and long tail down, reflecting it hitting a wall of humans not cooperating.”

Intuitively, one may be led to believe that aggressive social-distancing measures would prompt the curve to decline precipitously on the way down, since the pre-peak portion of the curve was comprised of pre-social distancing transmission and the latter portion of the curve is comprised of limited transmission due to social distancing. However, while the transmission on the curve's downward-sloping portion is limited, there's enough of it to ensure a "long tail" before coming back down to zero.

“There’s plenty of residual transmission if you think of being sheltered in place with other people," Rutherford said. "In some cases, people are sheltered in place with eight roommates, and then you have health care workers bringing it home and people coming from the outside that haven’t been socially distancing bringing it in to the community. You also have essential workers running cash register at Safeway potentially getting the virus, which will contribute to smaller chains of transmission and a much larger tail.”

Cumulative cases in the greater Bay Area (due to limited testing these numbers reflect only a small portion of likely cases):

ALAMEDA COUNTY: 1,468 confirmed cases, 52 deaths

For more information on Alameda County cases, visit the public health department website.

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY: 817 confirmed cases, 25 deaths

For more information on Contra Costa County cases, visit the public health department website.

LAKE COUNTY: 6 confirmed cases

For information on Lake County and coronavirus, visit the public health department website.

MARIN COUNTY: 223 confirmed cases, 12 deaths

Fore more information on Marin County cases, visit the public health department website.

MONTEREY COUNTY: 183 confirmed cases, 4 deaths

For more information on Monterey County cases, visit the public health department website.

NAPA COUNTY: 60 cases, 2 deaths

For more information on Napa County cases, visit the public health department website.

SAN BENITO COUNTY: 47 confirmed cases, 2 deaths

For more information on San Benito County cases, visit the public health department website.

SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY: 1,408 confirmed cases, 22 deaths

For more information on San Francisco County cases, visit the public health department website.

SAN MATEO COUNTY: 1,019 confirmed cases, 41 deaths

For more information on San Mateo County cases, visit the public health department website.

SANTA CLARA COUNTY: 2,084 confirmed cases, 100 deaths

Fore more information on Santa Clara County cases, visit the public health department website.

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY: 120 confirmed cases, 2 deaths

For more information on Santa Cruz County cases, visit the public health department website.

SOLANO COUNTY: 199 confirmed cases, 4 deaths

For more information on Solano County cases, visit the public health department website.

SONOMA COUNTY: 218 confirmed cases, 2 deaths

For more information on Sonoma County cases, visit the public health department website.

In California, 1,706 coronavirus-related deaths have been reported, according to Johns Hopkins University. For comparison, New York has 22,269, New Jersey 5,938 and Illinois 1,933.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE:

Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here.