But when the unpredictable coronavirus struck Espinoza, he went from fever to chills and tired breathing that sent him to a hospital in Southern California, where he died Monday, just over a week after hospitalization.
Espinoza is among the last to give way in what has become California’s deadliest wave. An average of 544 people have died every day in the past week, and on Saturday the state reached the negative threshold of 40,000 deaths overall, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
In just one year since the virus was first detected in the state, 1 in 1,000 Californians has died from it.
Espinoza’s wife, Nancy, watched through a glass window in the hospital as her husband breathed his last, then allowed himself into the room to be with him. Now she realizes what to do next and how she will raise her 3-year-old son alone.
“I just had so much faith,” said Nancy Espinoza, who, coincidentally, lives in a town called Corona. “It never occurred to me that it would be so serious, even if we hear about it all the time.”
The victims of COVID-19 were young and old, although mostly elderly. Some were fit and healthy, many others had a mixture of underlying medical conditions.
The death toll in California has risen rapidly since the worst pandemic began in mid-October. New cases and hospitalizations have reached a record high, but have declined rapidly over the past two weeks.
However, deaths remain astonishingly high at over 3,800 in the past week.
It took six months for California to record the first 10,000 deaths, then four months to double to 20,000. In just five more weeks, the state reached 30,000. Then it only took 20 days to reach 40,000.
Now, only New York has more deaths – deaths have exceeded 43,000 – but at this rate California will eclipse that too.
For much of the year, California has been a model for how to control the virus. It issued its first statewide shutdown in March last year and imposed a growing number of restrictions that have frustrated business owners but insisted they saved lives.
Cases fell after a peak in July, then began to rise again in the fall. Governor Gavin Newsom activated what he called the “emergency brake” on Nov. 16 to stop the state’s economy from reopening, keeping most public schools closed, banning church interior services and limiting the number of store customers.
But the coronavirus was already spinning like a runaway train. With Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year approaching, public health officials have warned people not to gather with those outside their homes.
The Johnson & Johnson single-injection vaccine is 85% effective against severe COVID-19 disease
However, hospitalizations exploded, and on December 3, Newsom issued a residence order that divided the state into five regions and called on more businesses to close or reduce capacity if intensive care units in their region fell to 15%. Four regions with 98% of the state’s population have reached this level.
Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley regions have been hardest hit, with some hospitals treating patients in hallways, cafes and gift shops. In Los Angeles, ambulances waited for hours to leave patients.
As conditions improve, all regions are now 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 for Latinos is 20% higher than the state average, according to figures from the Department of Public Health. The deaths of people of color are 12% higher. Case rates are 39% higher in communities where the average income is less than $ 40,000.
Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous country, with a quarter of the state’s nearly 40 million people, has more than 40 percent of California’s deaths from the virus. In November, the daily number of Latino deaths was 3.5 per 100,000. There are now 40 deaths per 100,000, an increase of over 1,100%.
The death toll has brought other gloomy signs. Morgues and funeral homes were overwhelmed, and refrigerated trucks held corpses.
Maria Rios Luna said it took almost three weeks for her mother’s body to be removed from the hospital, where she died in early January because there were another 200 bodies.
Her mother, Bernardina Luna de Rios, has always found ways to make ends meet by raising seven children on her own after surviving a car accident that killed her husband, she said.
Rios Luna, 22, said she has been particularly cautious with her mother since the pandemic began. She carried hand sanitizer everywhere and washed her hands immediately after returning to the house they had shared with her sister and two children.
SoCal family spins after 40-year-old mother of 3 dies from COVID-19
She was the one who went to get food so that her mother, who was generally healthy, apart from rheumatoid arthritis, would stay at home. But still, the virus found its way into their home in Fontana.
Her mother, 59, arrived at the hospital struggling to breathe, and her condition deteriorated. Her mother told them not to worry, that she believed in God and that things had happened for a reason.
When her heart began to fail, her children were allowed to see their mother through a window, while an inside nurse held a phone in Bernardine’s ear so she 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, then her lungs. He died the next day.
“We feel that she was waiting for us to go and see her,” said Rios Luna.
Copyright © 2021 by the Associated Press. All rights reserved.