LOS ANGELES (AP) – Ambulances waited hours for vacancies to unload patients with coronavirus. Overflowing patients were transferred to hospital corridors and gift shops, even to a cafeteria. Refrigerated trucks were on standby, ready to store the dead.
For months, California has done many of the right things to prevent a catastrophic increase in the pandemic. But when Governor Gavin Newsom said on December 15 that 5,000 body bags were being distributed, it was clear that the country’s most populous state had entered a new phase of the COVID-19 crisis.
Now, infections have been getting out of hand for weeks, and California has set new records for infections and deaths. It remains at the top or near the top of the list of states with the most new cases per capita.
Experts say a variety of factors combined have eliminated previous efforts, which for much of the year kept the virus at manageable levels. Tight accommodation, travel and Thanksgiving meetings contributed to the spread, along with public fatigue amid regulations that closed many schools and businesses and encouraged – or demanded – 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 can be.
California’s woes helped fuel the peak of infection in the United States later in the year and added urgency to attempts to ward off the scourge that killed more than 340,000 Americans. Even with vaccines available, cases are almost certain to continue to grow, and another increase is expected in the weeks after Christmas and New Year.
The southern half of the state saw the worst effects, from the agricultural valley of San Joaquin to the border with Mexico. Hospitals are full of patients and intensive care units no longer have beds for patients with COVID-19. Improvised wards are being installed in tents, arenas, classrooms and conference rooms.
Hospitalizations across the state have increased more than eight times in two months and almost ten times in Los Angeles County. On Thursday, the total number of deaths in California exceeded 25,000, joining only New York and Texas in that framework.
“The sad 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, director of public health for the county, who asked people not to meet and worsen the 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. Homes in and around Los Angeles tend to have several generations – or several families – living under one roof. These tend to be low-income areas, where residents have essential jobs that can expose them to the virus at work or in traffic.
The socioeconomic situation in LA County is “like a stick,” said Paula Cannon, 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 start the fire.”
Home to a quarter of the state’s 40 million residents, LA County had 40% of the state’s deaths and a third of its 2.2 million cases. The virus hit Latin and black communities more strongly.
Cannon said there is a moral imperative for people who can follow orders to stay at home to help prevent the spread that is more difficult to contain 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 are working on essential jobs?'” She said. “This is the structure that we cannot change in LA. This, I think, is contributing to the reason why our levels have suddenly gotten frighteningly high and it looks like they are going to keep going up and keep going. “
In March, during the early days of the pandemic, Newsom was acclaimed for issuing the country’s first state home stay order.
The Democrat eased business restrictions in May and, when a broader restart led to another increase, imposed more rules. In early December, with the cases out of control, he issued a more vague order to stay home. He also closed deals like barber shops and beauty salons, interrupted restaurants and limited the capacity of retail stores. The most recent restrictions apply everywhere except rural 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, he never bent the curve down to the point where the infections disappeared.
When cases increased in June and July, California was never able to do enough contact screening to isolate infected people and those they may have exposed before spreading the disease – often unintentionally – to others, he said. And public health guidelines have never been applied properly.
“What California did was perhaps delay the peak,” said Riley. Infections “never really got low enough. And we started to lift the restrictions, and that only allowed broadcasts to continue to increase. We have never seen a real decline. ”
California Health Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said that if state and local leaders had not made difficult decisions early on that saved lives, the current increase may not be the worst the state has seen.
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 have not followed the rules of social distance and masks.
Across California, local officials have reminded people that the fate of the virus lies in their behavior and called for yet another round of shared sacrifice. They reminded people that activities that were safe earlier this year are now risky as the virus spreads further.
“You can practice safe, low-risk behavior from March to October. But all of that has been erased. Nothing matters, except what you are doing to fight the virus now, ”said Corinne McDaniels-Davidson, director of the Institute of Public Health at San Diego State University. “This pandemic is an ultramarathon. In our culture, we are used to sprints. “
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Associated Press writer Jeffrey Collins of Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.