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In LA, ambulances circle for hours and ICUs are full. Is this what Covid-19 has in store for the rest of the country?
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LOS ANGELES — The situation here is dire. Every minute, 10 people test positive for Covid-19. Every eight minutes, someone dies. Ambulances circle for hours, unable to find ERs that can accept patients. Hospitals are running out of oxygen. ICU capacity is at zero. Patients lie in hallways and tents. Emergency room nurses have more patients than they can handle — sometimes six at a time.
The National Guard has arrived, not to help treat patients, but to manage the flood of bodies. As Los Angeles County approaches its millionth case of Covid-19, doctors describe their wards as war zones. Even the gorillas at the San Diego Zoo have gotten sick.
Just why did conditions deteriorate so badly in Southern California? And do the overwhelmed hospitals here offer a glimpse of what other regions may soon face as case counts rise steeply and a seemingly more infectious strain takes hold? Or did the unique and long-standing vulnerabilities of the nation’s second largest city conspire to ignite this current “surge on top of surge” that so many had feared but few predicted would get so bad that residents would be urged to refrain from entering grocery stores and, in some cases, to wear masks even while they are at home.
Like the city itself, the answers are complex — and also a bit perplexing.
When the novel coronavirus emerged in the U.S. last winter, LA County officials issued strict mask and stay-at-home orders so quickly they beat the virus back even as cases surged in New York and elsewhere. But that early success did not last.
Like the city itself, the answers are complex — and also a bit perplexing.
With the first wave, LA was the poster child on how to do things right,” said Leo Beletsky, a professor of law and health sciences at Northeastern University who is based in Los Angeles. “Then we blew the lead.”
The city’s early success may be one reason things are so bad right now. “What happened in New York is that people got very scared and they behaved,” said Karin Michels, who chairs the department of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “We did so well, people started to relax, and they stopped following the rules.” ...ors.
Early on, many experts thought LA’s notorious sprawl might be protective. They were wrong. LA doesn’t have a majority of residents living in and sharing elevators in dense high-rises like New York. But what the county has may be worse: a large population, a high rate of poverty, and, in some neighborhoods, the nation’s highest rate of severe overcrowding.
It’s also home to the nation’s largest population of Latinos, an ethnic group that has seen Covid-19 death rates in LA County increase a staggering 800% in recent months. ...
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