LOS ANGELES (AP) – Ambulances have been waiting for opening hours to unload coronavirus patients. Overflowing patients were moved to hospital lobbies and gift shops, even to a cafe. The refrigerated trucks were waiting, ready to store the dead.
For months, California has done many of the right things to avoid a catastrophic increase in the pandemic. But by the time Governor Gavin Newsom declared on December 15 that 5,000 body bags 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 has routinely set new records for infections and deaths. It stays in or near the top of the list of states with the latest per capita cases.
Experts say a variety of factors have been combined to eliminate past efforts, which for much of the year have kept the virus at manageable levels. Narrow housing gatherings, travel, and Thanksgiving have contributed to the spread, along with public fatigue amid regulations that have shut down many schools and companies and encouraged – or called for – 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 widespread this could be.
The troubles in California have helped fuel the rise in American infection since the end of the year and have added urgency to attempts to defeat the scourge that killed more than 340,000 Americans. Even when vaccines become available, cases are almost certain to continue to rise and another wave is expected in the weeks after Christmas and New Year.
The southern half of the state had the worst effects, from the San Joaquin agricultural valley to the border with Mexico. Hospitals are full of patients, and intensive care units no longer have beds for patients with COVID-19. Makeshift sections are set up in tents, arenas, 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 number of deaths in California exceeded 25,000, joining only New York and Texas at this stage.
“The most heartbreaking thing is that if we had done a better job of reducing the transmission of the virus, many of these deaths would not have happened,” said Barbara Ferrer, the county’s director of public health, who pleaded with the people. not to reunite and to get worse. spread.
Crowded houses and apartments are often cited as a source of spread, especially in Los Angeles, which has some of the densest neighborhoods in the United States. These tend to be lower-income areas where residents work essential jobs that can expose them to the virus at work or while commuting.
The socio-economic situation in LA County is “like ignition,” said Paula Cannon, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Southern California. “And now we have reached the stage where there was enough COVID in the community to light the fire.”
Home to a quarter of the state’s 40 million people, LA County had 40 percent of state deaths and a third of 2.2 million cases. The virus has hit Latin and black communities harder.
Cannon said there is a moral imperative for people who can follow home residence orders to prevent the spread that is harder to remember in other areas.
“What you can’t do is tell people, ‘Can you stop living in a house with eight other people, five of whom work in essential jobs for workers?’ “She said. “This is the structure we can’t change in LA. I think this contributes to the reasons why our levels have risen sharply and it seems that they will continue to rise and remain so. “
In March, in the early days of the pandemic, Newsom was greeted for issuing the country’s first state residence order.
The Democrat eased business restrictions in May and, when a broader restart led to further growth, imposed more rules. In early December, with cases out of control, he issued a weaker residence order. It also closed businesses such as hair salons and salons, shut down the restaurant and limited capacity in retail stores. The latest restrictions apply everywhere, except in rural California.
But Dr. Lee Riley, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of California at Berkeley, said that while the state has managed to flatten the growing case curve, it has never effectively curved the downward curve to the point where infections would disappear. .
When cases escalated in June and July, California never managed to keep track of contacts to isolate infected people and those they might have exposed before spreading the disease – often unintentionally – to others, he said. And public health directives have never been properly implemented.
“What California did was maybe postpone the tip,” Riley said. Infections “have never really dropped enough. And we started to lift the restrictions and that allowed the transmissions to continue to grow. I have never seen a real decline. “
California Health Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said that if state and local leaders did not make difficult decisions from the beginning that saved lives, the current growth may not be the worst he has ever seen. a state.
He acknowledged the exhaustion that many people feel after enduring months of interruptions in their lives. Public health officials, he said, need to find a way to reach people who have given up or failed to comply with the rules on social distance and masks.
Across California, local officials have reminded people that the fate of the virus lies in their behavior and called for another round of joint sacrifice. They reminded people that activities that were safe earlier this year are now risky as the virus becomes more widespread.
“You can practice safety and low-risk behavior from March to October. But everything is erased. Nothing matters other than 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 of Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to the report.