In almost all major measures, the spread of the virus is profoundly more dire in Southern California. The San Francisco Bay area has 4% of its intensive care beds still available and Northern California 25%. Southern California reached zero percent weeks ago.
Los Angeles County reported more cases this week than San Francisco reported during the entire pandemic.
“It’s night and day,” said Dr. Bob Wachter, professor and head of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
The reasons for the split, experts say, are complex and many.
The Bay Area has one of the highest average incomes in California, perhaps giving residents more means to protect themselves. Many in the north are employed in the technology industry, which at the beginning of the pandemic led to a shift to domestic work. Compared to southern California, the bay area also has a higher percentage of white and Asian families, groups that had the lowest infection rates in the state.
In the Los Angeles area, in the parking lot outside Huntington Park Community Hospital, Mr. Estrada watched more than a dozen bodies being taken to an unmarked white refrigerated container, the makeshift morgue.
“Basically, you are waiting to see your family member go out on a purse,” he said.
Her 72-year-old grandmother was recently put on a respirator.
“She’s fighting now,” he said. “So, if she is fighting, we have to stay here fighting for her.”
Manny Fernandez reported from Los Angeles, Thomas Fuller Moraga, California, and Mitch Smith from Chicago. The report was contributed by Louis Keene from Huntington Park, California, Ana Facio-Krajcer from Los Angeles and Joe Purtell from San Francisco.