But when the unpredictable coronavirus struck Espinoza, he went from fever to chills to painful breathing that sent him to a Southern California hospital, where he died Monday, just over a week after he died. been admitted.
Espinoza is one of the last to succumb to what has become California’s deadliest increase. An average of 544 people died each day in the past week, and on Saturday the state hit the 40,000 death mark overall, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
Barely a year since the virus was first detected in the state, 1 in 1,000 Californians has died.
Espinoza’s wife, Nancy, watched through a glass window in the hospital as her husband breathed from behind, and then was allowed into the room to be with him. Now find out what to do next and how to raise your 3-year-old son alone.
“I just had so much faith,” said Nancy Espinoza, who by cruel chance lives in a city called Corona. “I never would have thought it would be so serious, even though we hear about it all the time.”
The victims of COVID-19 have been old and young, though mostly older. Some were fit and healthy, many more had a combination of underlying medical conditions.
The death toll in California has risen rapidly since the worst increase in the pandemic began in mid-October. New cases and hospitalizations increased to the maximum, but have declined rapidly in the last two weeks.
Still, deaths remain surprisingly high, with more than 3,800 last week.
It took California six months to record its first 10,000 deaths, and then four months to double to 20,000. In just five more weeks the state reached 30,000. Then it took only 20 days to reach 40,000.
Now in New York alone there are more deaths (fatalities have exceeded 43,000 people), but at this rate California will also eclipse.
For much of the year, California was a model of how to control the virus. Last March it issued the first state unemployment strike and imposed a steady number of restrictions that have frustrated business owners, but state officials insist they have saved lives.
Cases fell after a peak in July and then rose again in the fall. Gov. Gavin Newsom activated what he called the “emergency brake” on Nov. 16 to halt the reopening of the state’s economy, keeping most public schools closed, banning church services. inside and limiting the number of customers in stores.
But the coronavirus was already walking like a runaway train. With Thanksgiving dates, Christmas and New Year, public health officials warned people not to meet with those who were away from home.
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However, hospitalizations skyrocketed and on December 3 Newsom issued a stay-at-home order that divided the state into five regions and demanded that more companies close or reduce capacity if the U.S. intensive care units their region fell to 15% of capacity. Four regions with 98% of the state’s population reached this level.
Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley regions were the hardest hit, and some hospitals cared for patients in hallways, cafes, and gift shops. In Los Angeles, ambulances waited hours to leave patients.
With the improvement of conditions, now all regions are out of order, although many strict restrictions remain.
Cases and deaths in California have disproportionately affected people of color and poorer communities, where families live in more crowded homes and among those without health insurance. Many also work in jobs with a higher risk of exposure.
The mortality rate of Latinos is 20% higher than the state average, according to data from the Department of Public Health. Black deaths are 12% higher. Case rates are 39% higher in communities where the average income is less than $ 40,000.
Los Angeles County, the country’s most populous country with a quarter of the state’s nearly 40 million residents, has more than 40 percent of California’s virus deaths. In November, the daily number of Latino deaths was 3.5 per 100,000 residents. There are now 40 deaths per 100,000, an increase of more than 1,100%.
The death toll has led to other negative signs. The morgues and funeral homes have been overflowing and refrigerated trucks have kept bodies.
Maria Rios Luna said it took almost three weeks to pick up her mother’s body from the hospital where she died in early January because there were another 200 bodies.
Her mother, Bernardina Luna de Rios, had always found ways to reach two by raising seven children alone after surviving a car accident that killed her husband, she said.
Rios Luna, 22, said she was especially cautious with her mother since the pandemic began. She carried hand sanitizer everywhere and washed her hands immediately upon returning to the house they shared with her sister and her two children.
The SoCal family died after the death of COVID-19, a 40-year-old mother of three
It was she who went to get groceries so that her mother, who was generally healthy other than her rheumatoid arthritis, could stay home. But even so, the virus reached its home in Fontana.
Her 59-year-old mother ended up in the hospital having difficulty breathing and her condition deteriorated. Their mother told them not to worry, that she believed in God and that things were happening for a reason.
When her heart began to fail, her children were allowed to see their mother through a window while a nurse inside had a phone in Bernardina’s ear so they could talk to her.
“Once I saw her in bed, honestly, it broke my heart,” Rios Luna said. “I had never seen my mother so vulnerable.”
After the visit, her mother’s liver stopped working and then her lungs. He died the next day.
“We felt like he was expecting us to go see her,” Rios Luna said.
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