Coronavirus cases soar in Greenville, hitting Hispanic communities harder | COVID-19

GREENVILLE – On a recent Saturday, Ennis Fant Sr.’s microwave broke. It was a minor annoyance, but it required a trip to Walmart.

But when the Greenville county councilor arrived at the store, he was surprised by what he saw – large crowds, little social distance and few masks. It was as if the COVID-19 pandemic was a thing of the distant past, even as cases of respiratory disease skyrocketed in South Carolina’s most populous county.

“You would think it was the day before Thanksgiving,” said Fant, who turned and went home without a new microwave.

Bad habits, a common sense of apathy about the deadly virus and a number of socioeconomic factors have fueled the sharp rise in cases of COVID-19 here. The same happened with the increase of tests for the disease in Hispanic communities that were not equipped for the coronavirus as they were for the economic paralysis that accompanied it.

If the city of Camden was the epicenter of the initial pandemic outbreak in South Carolina, Greenville County became a milestone for the resurgence of the disease after the state reopened its economy last month.

The county, located at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, led the state in new COVID-19 cases almost every day last month. Almost one in five confirmed South Carolina cases last month are from Greenville County, located in the heart of Upstate.

The area’s nearly 3,700 total cases far exceeded 2,660 in Richland County and 1,800 in Charleston County. Only Horry County had a higher rate of infection in the past two weeks.

Two major hospitals in the area, Prisma Health and Bon Secours St. Francis, are hospitalizing more patients with COVID-19 than ever before. And without a vaccine, doctors have yet to discover an infallible treatment for the disease, which strikes mainly the elderly and people with pre-existing medical conditions. If the case count continues to increase, Bon Secours may have to postpone some elective surgeries, again, to conserve resources.

“If people don’t do the right thing and help the numbers drop, we risk running over at some point,” said Marcus Blackstone, clinical director at Bon Secours.

The new cases do not represent the “second wave” of the virus that many feared would come in the fall or winter. They stem from a failure to eliminate the former. Authorities are still working to triangulate the spread of the virus in Greenville County. But it is clear that the disease has taken root in two groups: underprivileged minorities who cannot afford to stay at home and at a social distance, and everyone else who can do so still refuses.

‘Working to survive’

Nowhere is the return of the virus more evident than in the Hispanic and Latin communities of Greenville.

Hispanics make up about 10% of the growing population of Greenville County, 500,000. But they account for 30 percent of the county’s new COVID-19 cases.

During the first week of June, almost half – 47.8 percent – of patients admitted to one of Prisma Health’s Greenville hospitals for COVID-19 identified as Hispanic, according to the health care system.

Zip code 29611 in western Greenville County, where Hispanic shops, restaurants and grocery stores line the roads, has more cases of coronavirus than any other zip code in South Carolina.

Socioeconomics is working behind the rise in the case count, say Hispanic advocates.

Hispanics and Latinos are more likely to live in multigenerational families, with grandparents, cousins ​​and grandchildren under one roof. This makes social distance more difficult and prevents the virus from spreading if a relative contracts it.

And some Hispanic families have increased in size in recent weeks, receiving relatives who have been evicted from motels or informal rental agreements for not paying rent during the recent economic crisis, advocates said.

Hispanics are also more likely to work in “essential” jobs in construction, restaurants and hotels, which puts them at greater risk of contracting the virus and bringing it home. This includes undocumented migrants who were not entitled to unemployment benefits or stimulus checks and need the money.

“They need to keep working to survive,” said Sara Montero Buria, director of communications for the Hispanic Alliance, based in Greenville, a nonprofit organization that connects Hispanics to the services they need.

Rev. Manuel Izquierdo saw this fight first hand. He runs a food bank in Greenville that feeds 25 to 30 families a week, most of them Hispanic. But during the pandemic, the bank fed 90 to 130 families a week, he said.

Izquierdo also runs a subsidy program that donates $ 200 at a time to Hispanic families who increasingly need extra money to pay rent and utility bills.

Izquierdo and other supporters are concerned that many Hispanics are also not taking the pandemic seriously. Some advocates said Hispanics tend to be skeptical of the government and to rely on home remedies instead of medical institutions.

Jairo Maldonado has faced this type of skepticism about the pandemic since the reopening of his company, Elegance Barbershop, in Greenville, three weeks ago.

Maldonado wears blue gloves and a black mask while cutting his hair. He keeps baby wipes, masks and hand sanitizer on a table near the front door and precisely controls how many customers enter the barbershop at the same time.

Maldonado is a kind of influencer in the Hispanic community of Greenville, boasting more than 46,000 followers on Instagram. But when he mentions the virus to his predominantly Hispanic clientele, some don’t believe it.

“There are people who say to me, ‘I don’t believe this,’” said Maldonado through a translator. “I tell them, ‘OK, your beliefs are beyond the door. But inside the door, I have to comply with the law for my business and my family. ‘”

Hospitals are working to overcome this skepticism. Prisma Health is employing its Hispanic outreach program to publicize social detachment guidelines and new test sites on social media and on local Spanish radio programs.

The hospital has bilingual staff at its mobile testing sites in Hispanic communities and asks minimally invasive questions to make undocumented immigrants feel comfortable taking the test.

“They trust us,” said Rut Rivera, who runs this outreach program.

‘They don’t believe it’

While the increase in Hispanic COVID-19 cases is significant, the data shows that the virus is spreading across Greenville County, across geographical and racial boundaries.

Five of the state’s top 12 postal codes for COVID-19 cases are here, circling downtown Greenville on three sides.

In the public spaces of the city, the use of masks and social distance are, at best, inconsistent.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, a reporter sat on the corner of East McBee Avenue and South Main Street in downtown Greenville and counted 25 people passing by, most of them in small groups, before seeing someone wearing a mask. During the same exercise at the entrance to Falls Park, in the city center, 30 people passed before the first person with a mask passed.

At neighboring Liberty Bridge that crosses the Reedy River, smiling teenagers gathered in tuxedos and dresses to take pictures of the ball while their parents watched.

After nearly two months confined to their homes, sacrificing wages and social experiences just to slow the spread of the virus for a while, residents want a return to normal, say Greenville County leaders.

That means seeing your friends again and supporting local businesses, a trademark of Greenville’s untouched center. It does not always include the use of masks and the distance between them.

“Many young people here don’t know anyone who has been ill and has had a very bad experience,” said Butville Kirven, chairman of the Greenville County Council. “You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.”

Statistics from the State Department of Health and Environmental Control support this theory. The agency warned on Friday that SC residents under 30 are testing increasingly positive for the disease, accounting for more than a quarter of the state’s positive cases.

The initial economic outage failed to dispel the virus entirely, and Governor Henry McMaster said he would not reinstate restrictions on public life, saying that individuals should do their part by following public health guidelines.

But in many parts of the state, including Greenville, these appeals have fallen on deaf ears, even as cases have increased.

“The political stomach to close is almost over,” said Kirven.

Fant, one of the two Democrats on the County Council, said he thinks the indifferent attitude toward the virus underscores political beliefs in strongly conservative Greenville County.

“They still believe it is a scam,” said Fant. “They don’t believe it, and you can see that it reflects their behavior.”

State Representative Jason Elliott, a Greenville Republican, acknowledged that “most residents of Greenville County have a healthy skepticism about government control and a strongly independent mind.”

It may be difficult for Dr. Blackstone, Bon Secours’ chief clinical officer, to reconcile this skepticism with the most serious cases of COVID-19 he sees at his downtown hospital.

“There are some people who don’t think this is real, which fascinates and frustrates us,” said Blackstone. “We see the people who die, the long road to recovery.”