As Florida virus Venus, City Battles ‘epidemic fatigue’

Hialeah, Fla. – Of all the places in the country that are most susceptible to coronavirus, Hialiah is an easy prey: a Hispanic blue-collar enclave outside of Miami where homes are full, incomes are tight, and work is required.

The virus has spread to nursing homes in the city of South Florida, growing into structures in its crowded apartment buildings and into families whose breadwinners have to go out every day to work in construction sites, hospitals and factories.

Miami-Dade County has had the worst coronavirus outbreak in the country and for several days now there have been no new cases in the county other than downtown Hialeah in any other zip code. There are many more in just three cities in the state – Miami, Land Rlando and Jacksonville.

The Miami area is slowly beginning to control its infection rate. But it’s hard to be optimistic in Hialia, Florida’s sixth-largest city, where prevalence has been stubborn.

Paramedics have fallen ill. A father and son, both physicians who treated local residents for decades, have died. A funeral home brought an extra cooler to store the bodies, to protest the concerned neighbors. Some of the city’s hospitals have called for ambulances on top of summer extra to bypass their emergency rooms as they are full of Covid-19 patients.

“The classes were back-to-back – at night, during the day, whenever,” said Eric Johnson, president of the city’s Fire Fighter Paramedic and Local Firefighters Association. He contracted the virus himself in March, probably at work, and then found his wife.

“You’ll see a house with 11 or 12 people inside,” he said. “Many, many, many, Many You come back to the same place for many patients outside the same house. ”

Hialeah – pronounced hi-ah-le-ah – with its trashy motels, industrial industrial origins and colorful history of corruption, stereotypes are likely. (The sitting mayor has confessed to loan sharking and once tried to pay a 000 4,000 ethics fine in Penis.)

Hialiah Park, the casino and racetrack, appears as a backdrop in “The Godfather: Part II” and was filmed for the opening credit of the park’s flamingo TV show “Miami Vice”. The local Kentucky fried chicken is the only one in the country that does not sell fln for dessert. (It’s delicious.) Jenna Cape Crucet, a native of the city, says readers outside of Florida often think that her first book, How to Hail to a Holiday, is about a woman, not a place.

Hialia is at its core, however, it is a city of families and workers, two demographics plagued by coronaviruses.

In April, the city received national attention for its crush of people waiting in public libraries to receive applications for unemployment benefits. To get weekly food aid at Amelia Erhart Park or San Lazaro Roman Catholic Church and Shrine – people have recently been in their cars three miles away in the morning for pastel duplexes, auto toe repair shops and warehouses.

Melissa Espiner, 26, works with her partner as a slot attendant at Miami Gardens Casino; The two were permanently released in March and then in July. They have no health insurance.

Ms. Espiner is spending her savings and 0 240 K per week she and her partner get unemployment compensation. He lives with his mother in an apartment apartment, which is a self-employed cleaning house.

He said, ‘We keep telling him,’ Don’t go. “She is cleaning other people’s houses, houses where we do not know who is sick or not. He did not give it to anyone. “

The spread of the virus through crowded partitions became so bad that elected officials began advising families of social distance from each other and wearing masks at home if any of them had to go out regularly.

But enforcing outdoor rules has proven difficult. While people also set up a hotline for people to report businesses violating masks and social distance orders, some residents complained that in communist Cuba years ago people needed to be forced to snatch neighbors from each other. Hialeah, more than 233,000 reliably Republican cities, is home to 96 percent Hispanics and more Cubans and Cuban-Americans than anywhere else in the country.

The president and chairman of Larkin Community Hospital in Hiala, Dr. “The epidemic in this area is very exhausting,” said Jack Mitchell. “A lot of people don’t realize we’re going to live with this for another year – maybe more time.”

The spread of the virus by the state led to the closure of a support facility in the city and a major outbreak in a local nursing home, killing 136 cases and 52 people, the city set up a task force and sent a fire department to visit everyone in the city. 100 facilities, said Jesse Tundidore, a member of the City Council who led the effort. Protecting protective devices such as masks and gloves requires about a fifth of the help.

Mr. Tundidor’s own family is infected with the virus. His stepfather, who lives with Mr. Tundidor’s mother and 90-year-old grandmother, had to go to his maintenance job and test positive for the virus, leading to a nerve-racking family conversation.

“‘What shall I do with my grandmother?’ “‘Shall we bring him to my house?’ But I always go out on the street, and my wife has to work as a therapist assistant. And she is pregnant. (Grandma stayed put, but separated in her bedroom until her daughter-in-law tested negative.)

Now that the spread of the virus has subsided, hospital administrators and public health experts are concerned that reopening too quickly could eventually lead to another spike.

In Miami-Dade County, the virus’s positivity rate remains around 8 percent, less than half of what it was at its peak but higher than it was in early June, when the county reopened for the first time. Concerns about Labor Day have increased due to gatherings on subsequent holidays, including Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

But the county mayor has said he will not close the beach for the holiday. The restaurant allows customers to re-enter their dining room on Mondays. Casinos also opened. Soon there will be some fans in football games.

“It just seems like nothing has changed here,” M.S. Espiner, unemployed slot worker. “When things started to go awry, it felt like people were really at home, not going out every day. But since June, I’ve been watching parties – even my friends, on social media, going out. And I am, ‘I don’t feel safe! Why is everyone going out? ‘

The virus has slowed down, but it has left the devastation in the wake of Hialeah. The list of victims now includes Dr. Carter F. Vallejo, an intern who saw patients in the rehabilitation center at Palmetto General Hospital in Hiala, where his family thought he was infected with the virus.

“We’ll tell him, ‘Be careful, Dad, try to keep your distance.'” His son Charles Vallejo said. “‘Try not to walk around the room.’ But he was kind of a man. He said, ‘No, no, I have to go there, listen to their lungs. These patients are like family to me.’ “

Dr .. Vallejo, 57, on Father’s Day by his own father, Dr J George a. Vallejo, an 89-year-old retired obstetrician and gynecologist who has been practicing medicine in Hialeah for 25 years, was hospitalized within three hours. Jorge Vallejo died on June 27. Carlos Vallejo held until 1 August.

“We always joked that Miami was a big city, but there was a small community in Hialeah,” said Charles Vallejo, a third-year medical student. “A lot of people knew him.”

Among them was Ariel Cribiro, 32, a high school football coach in neighboring Miami Lakes, who had Dr. as his office. Carlos Vallejo inherited because he was also his parents’ doctor.

“Miami Lakes and Hialeah are just one big area, and it’s just an atmosphere that’s something different than what you see in Miami: you can walk down the street and see people you know,” Mr. Cribiro said. “Everyone knows someone affected.”

Kovid-19’s friend’s father died in April. A member of his coaching staff fell ill and recovered. Mr. Cribiro’s fianc quit his banking job.

“A lot of people who live here don’t mean to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to work so I don’t get sick,'” he said. “It’s not like people are just running around coughing freely at people. There are good people struggling. Hopefully we can get through this. “