California’s second rise in coronavirus has resulted in an almost doubling of weekly deaths since the spring – with nearly 1,000 deaths in the last week alone – and the geography of the outbreak radically shifted, a Times analysis of data found.
Suburban and agricultural areas that were relatively spared during California’s first attack of the virus are now being destroyed. And urban areas like Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area report death tolls just as high, if not higher, than in the spring.
The Central Valley has become home to one of the hottest coronavirus hot spots in the country.
In eight southern Central Valley counties, weekly deaths from COVID-19 have jumped from about 20 a week in April to nearly 200 a week in the last two weeks, a Times analysis found. San Joaquin Valley residents account for 20% of recent deaths statewide, even though they account for about 10% of the state’s population.
For the seven-day period that ended Monday, 969 deaths were reported in California, the largest weekly death toll since the pandemic began. During the spring uprising of the virus, the highest weekly death toll was in the week of April 21, when 553 deaths were reported.
In the southern part of the state, suburban regions are also experiencing an increase in deaths. San Bernardino County recorded 128 coronavirus deaths in the seven-day period ending Monday, nearly doubling the weekly death toll from 34 the week before. Riverside County’s weekly death toll of 83 last week was nearly double what it was in April.
Orange County reported 73 deaths last week; for the week of April 21, Orange County recorded six deaths. Ventura County recorded 16 deaths last week; that county reported fewer than five deaths per week in April.
But, in general, perhaps the biggest cause for concern is the Central Valley.
The reduction in death rates is due to the rapid spread of coronavirus among low-wage workers in jobs such as agriculture and food processing. Major outbreaks have been reported at a Foster Farms poultry processing plant in Merced County; Central Valley Meat Co., a meat packing facility in Kings County; and Ruiz Foods, a frozen food packaging company in Tulare County.
It’s clear why the San Joaquin Valley is being negatively impacted, said Edward Flores, a sociology professor with UC Merced’s Community and Labor Center: The region has an extraordinary number of residents working as low-income, frontline workers, people with precarious job security in a region notorious for violating workplace safety rules.
“All these problems … existed before the COVID pandemic. And just like any other inequality, it’s just getting bigger now, ‘Flores said. ‘It was there before – people died on the job; people lost limbs. … Now that there’s a pandemic, those agencies are likely to become even more overwhelmed. “
An analysis by the Labor Center found that 34% of San Joaquin Valley workers work in frontline jobs, where there is an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 because employees cannot work from home. More than 40% of the workers in Madera County are essential workers – making it the province with the third-highest proportion of these workers of any other province nationwide.
By contrast, about 18% to 22% of employees in LA, Orange and San Diego and the Bay Area work in frontline essential jobs, such as agriculture, mining, food manufacturing, supermarkets, transportation, warehousing and health care.
Part of the problem, Flores said, is that many of the existing COVID-19 health policies “do not do much for low-wage workers who … cannot afford to take time off work without risking hungry or fired. ”
Although statewide efforts have been made to give paid days off to workers in the food sector, Flores says he wonders how much workers – especially those in the country illegally – know about those rights and what happens when they are fired when they try to follow the rules.
“Employers have a role to play in this, and they are simply forgetting their responsibilities in the name of trying to make a quick profit,” Flores said, citing employers who have threatened workers that they will lose their jobs if they miss work. “As long as we want food on our table, there will be people who work a little bit closer together – not just Skyping or Zooming from home – and our policies need to address that.”
Flores said two important things need to be done: ensuring workers are paid when they became infected when time was needed to nurture a love affair, and improving and maintaining health and safety standards in the workplace.
The recent outbreaks have also been fueled by some of the worst prison carriages in California history.
State officials unknowingly transferred infected prisoners from the California Institute of Men in Chino and saw new cases in the Corcoran State Prison in Kings County and triggered a particularly devastating outbreak at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County. The outbreak of San Quentin has resulted in the deaths of 25 prisoners and one guard so far, and has filled hospital beds throughout the Bay Area.
After the initial transfer, infected residents from San Quentin were then sent to a prison in Lassen County, fighting outbreaks in rural California.
An outbreak in Avenal State Prison has been accused of infecting staff living throughout the Central Valley, exacerbating disease transmission in Fresno and Kings counties.
Health experts said some states were moving too fast to reopen society after the first wave of coronavirus cases. Govin Gavin Newsom, under pressure to lift months-long stay-at-home restrictions in May that had shut down major swaths of the economy, began allowing counties to reopen businesses before complying with his own previously established criteria for safe opening.
Without naming the specific states, Drs. Anthony Fauci, the top expert of the U.S. government, told the Brown University School of Public Health forum last week that some leaders “skipped over some of the checkpoints” recommended for a safer opening and loose stay-at-home orders without waiting for new cases to go down. Outbreaks began to spread in the workplace, and viruses spread to barbecues, parties and bars.
The regions of California hit the hardest in the first phase of the pandemic – the Bay Area and LA County – have seen weekly deaths return to – or exceed – spring levels.
LA County’s weekly death toll in the spring reached 329 in late April, then fell as late as 194 in late June before climbing two weeks ago and 327 last week.
The Bay Area has seen a death toll worse, even than its spring levels. The region registered as many as 67 deaths in one week in April; two weeks ago, the Bay Area recorded 81 deaths. Last week there were 72 dead.
San Diego County recorded its two worst weekly deaths in mid-July, averaging 56 deaths per week in two weeks – more than double the April average. In the last two weeks, average weekly deaths have averaged about 31 per week.
Other counties with sharp growth in the recent deaths of COVID-19 include Sacramento, Santa Barbara and Sonoma.
Still, officials express a note of optimism: Weekly cases and hospitalizations seem to be reaching their second peak, even as they hit the glitch in the state’s reporting system for new cases that were resolved over the weekend.
Last week there were an average of 5,816 people in hospitals with confirmed coronavirus infections every day, the second following week there was a decline. The number peaked three weeks ago, when an average of 6,941 people were hospitalized every day for a period of seven days.
Although the statewide average is declining, not all regions have seen a decline in hospital settings. The Sacramento County Seven District has recorded 11 straight weeks of increasing hospitalization.
Amid the recent turnout, elected officials have said they intend to learn from the past in considering future reopening plans.
“We can all, in retrospect, see that some things opened up too quickly, that we did not stand with the methodology of do-something-and-wait-three weeks and see the effect,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said on July 22. . “It became kind of a domino effect with the … irrational spread of everyone who thought we could go back to normal.”
Times writers Hailey Branson-Potts, Kim Christensen, Taryn Luna, Luke Money, James Rainey, Jake Sheridan and Richard Winton contributed to this report.
