But when the unpredictable coronavirus hit Espinoza, he went from fever to chills and hard breathing that sent him to a Southern California hospital, where he died on Monday, just over a week after he was admitted.
Espinoza is among the last to succumb to what has become the deadliest outbreak in California. An average of 544 people died every day in the past week, and on Saturday, the state reached the bleak mark of 40,000 deaths in total, 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 have died from it.
Espinoza’s wife, Nancy, watched through a glass window in the hospital while her husband breathed for the last time, then was allowed to stay in the room to be with him. She is now figuring out what to do next and how to raise her 3 year old child on her own.
“I just had a lot of faith,” said Nancy Espinoza, who by cruel coincidence lives in a city called Corona. “It never crossed my mind that it would be so serious, although we hear about it all the time.”
The victims of COVID-19 are young and old, although the majority are older. Some were fit and healthy, many more had a mixture of underlying medical conditions.
The death toll in California has increased rapidly since the worst pandemic outbreak began in mid-October. New cases and hospitalizations have reached record levels, but have declined rapidly in the past two weeks.
Deaths remain incredibly high, however, with more than 3,800 in the past week.
It took California six months to register its first 10,000 deaths, then four months to double to 20,000. In just another five weeks, the state reached 30,000. Then it took just 20 days to reach 40,000.
Now, only New York has more deaths – fatalities reach 43,000 – but at this rate, California will eclipse that too.
For much of the year, California was a model for how to control the virus. He issued the first statewide shutdown last March and imposed an ever-changing number of restrictions that frustrated business owners, but that state officials insist saved lives.
Cases fell after a peak in July, but started to rise again in the fall. Governor Gavin Newsom activated what he called an “emergency brake” on Nov. 16 to halt the reopening of the state’s economy, keeping most public schools closed, preventing internal church services and limiting the number of customers in stores.
But the coronavirus was already running like a runaway train. With Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and the New Year approaching, public health officials have warned people not to meet with people outside the home.
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Still, hospitalizations skyrocketed, and on December 3, Newsom issued a home stay order that divided the state into five regions and demanded that more companies close or reduce capacity if the intensive care units in their region dropped to 15. %. Four regions with 98% of the state’s population have reached this level.
The southern California and San Joaquin Valley regions were hardest hit, with some hospitals treating patients in hallways, cafeterias and gift shops. In Los Angeles, ambulances waited hours to leave patients.
As conditions improve, all regions are out of order, although many strict restrictions remain.
California cases and deaths have disproportionately affected people of color and poorer communities, where families live in more crowded housing and among those without health insurance. Many also work in jobs with a higher risk of exposure.
The death rate among 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 most populous in the country, with a quarter of the state’s nearly 40 million residents, has more than 40% of California’s virus deaths. In November, the daily number of Latin 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 brought other gloomy signs. Mortuaries and funeral homes have been overloaded and refrigerated trucks are holding bodies.
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 200 other bodies.
Her mother, Bernardina Luna de Rios, has always found ways to survive by raising seven children on her own after she survived a car accident that killed her husband, she said.
Rios Luna, 22, said she was especially cautious with her mother since the start of the pandemic. She carried hand sanitizer everywhere and washed her hands immediately upon returning to the house they shared with her sister and two children.
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She was the one who was going to buy groceries so that her mother, who was generally healthy, except for rheumatoid arthritis, could stay at home. Even so, the virus found its way into his home in Fontana.
His 59-year-old mother ended up in the hospital struggling to breathe and her condition worsened. Her mother told them not to worry, that she believed in God and that things happened for a reason.
When their hearts started to fail, their children were able to see their mother through a window while a nurse held the phone to Bernardina’s ear so they could talk to her.
“Once I saw her in bed, honestly, it broke my heart,” said Rios Luna. “I have never seen my mother so vulnerable.”
After the visit, the mother’s liver stopped working, then the lungs. She died the next day.
“We feel that she expected us to go and see her,” said Rios Luna.
Copyright © 2021 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.