LOS ANGELES (AP) – Ambulances waited hours until the openings to unload coronavirus patients. Overflowing patients were taken to hospital corridors and gift shops, even to a coffee shop. Refrigerated trucks were waiting, ready to store the dead.
For months, California did many of the right things to prevent a catastrophic increase in the pandemic. But when Governor Gavin Newsom said on Dec. 15 that 5,000 bags of the body were being distributed, it was clear that the nation’s most populous state had entered a new phase of the COVID-19 crisis.
Now infections have been out of control for weeks and California routinely sets new records of infections and deaths. It remains at the top of the list of states with the most cases per capita.
Experts say several factors are combined to end past efforts, which for much of the year kept the virus at manageable levels. Reduced housing, travel, and Thanksgiving meetings contributed to the spread, along with public fatigue amid regulations that closed many schools and businesses and fostered (or required) an isolated lifestyle.
Another factor could be a more contagious variant of the virus detected in Southern California, although it is not yet clear how far it can spread.
California’s problems have helped fuel the rise in U.S. infection and added urgency to attempts to overcome the scourge that has killed more than 340,000 Americans. Even when vaccines are available, cases are likely to continue to grow and a new rise is expected in the weeks after Christmas and New Year.
The southern half of the state has suffered the worst effects, from the San Joaquin Agricultural Valley to the border with Mexico. Hospitals are flooded with patients and intensive care units no longer have beds for patients with COVID-19. Campaign change rooms are being set up in tents, spaces, classrooms and conference rooms.
Statewide hospitalizations have increased more than eightfold in two months and nearly tenfold in Los Angeles County. On Thursday, the total death toll in California exceeded 25,000, and only New York and Texas joined in that milestone.
“The most heartbreaking thing is that if we had done a better job of reducing the transmission of the virus, many of those deaths would not have happened,” said Barbara Ferrer, the county’s director of public health, who has advocated against people not meeting. and worsen the spread.
Crowded houses and apartments are often cited as a source of diffusion, especially in Los Angeles, which has some of the densest neighborhoods in the U.S. These are usually areas with lower incomes where residents work essential jobs that can expose them to the virus at work or while traveling.
The socioeconomic situation in Los Angeles County is “similar to the ignition,” said Paula Cannon, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Southern California. “And now we got to the stage where there was enough COVID in the community lighting the fire.”
Instead of a quarter of the state’s 40 million residents, LA County has had 40% of the state’s deaths and a third of its 2.2 million cases. The virus has hit the Latino and black communities hardest.
Cannon said there is a moral imperative for people who can follow home stay orders to help prevent the spread that is harder to contain in other areas.
“What you can’t do is tell people,‘ Can you stop living in a house with eight more people, five of whom work essential worker jobs? “This is the structure that we can’t change in Los Angeles. I think that contributes to the reason why our levels have suddenly increased dramatically and it looks like they will continue to rise and continue to do so.”
In March, during the early days of the pandemic, Newsom was acclaimed for issuing the first stay order at the country’s home.
The Democrat eased business restrictions in May and, when a broader restart led to another increase, imposed more rules. In early December, with cases out of control, he issued a looser order to stay home. It also closed businesses such as barbershops and salons, stopped restaurants and limited capacity to retail stores. The latest restrictions apply everywhere except in Northern California.
But Dr. Lee Riley, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of California at Berkeley, said that while the state managed to flatten the curve of increasing cases, it never bent the curve to the point until ‘end the infections.
When cases escalated in June and July, California was never able to keep track of contacts to isolate infected people and those they may have exposed before spreading the disease (often unintentionally) to other people, he said. to say. And public health directives were never properly enforced.
“What California did was maybe slow the peak,” Riley said. Infections “really never went down enough. And we started lifting the restrictions and that allowed the transmissions to continue to increase. We never saw a real decline. “
California Secretary of Health Dr. Mark Ghaly said that if state and local leaders had not made difficult decisions at first that saved lives, the current increase may not be the worst the state has seen.
He acknowledged the exhaustion many people feel after enduring months of interruptions in their lives. Public health officials, he said, must find a way to reach people who have or have not given up on following rules on social restraint and masks.
Across California, local officials have reminded people that the fate of the virus lies in their behavior and have called for one more round of shared sacrifice. They reminded people that activities that were safe earlier this year are now risky as the virus spreads.
“You can practice safe and low-risk behaviors from March to October. But all this is erased. Nothing matters except what you do to fight the virus right now, ”said Corinne McDaniels-Davidson, director of the Institute of Public Health at San Diego State University. “This pandemic is an ultra-marathon. In our culture, we are used to sprints ”.
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Associated Press writer Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.