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The American state of California has transformed itself from a model student to a problem child in the fight against the corona pandemic. In the metropolis of Los Angeles, the full extent is evident.
The beeping of life-support machines is the only thing that can be heard in the intensive care unit of a hospital in one of the poorest areas of Los Angeles. Several older men lie in a row in an artificial coma and are hooked up to ventilators. “We are doing our best. But we have seen so many deaths in the last few weeks,” says nurse Vanessa Arias.
Arias works at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital A few minutes ago, she had to take the news to another family that her mother was no longer alive. “We are in the eye of the storm,” says the nurse.
A field hospital was built in front of the building.
The MLK hospital on the border between the Watts and Compton slums in South Los Angeles actually only has 131 beds. He is now treating 215 patients, most of them for Covid-19. The hospital chapel and a gift shop were converted into treatment rooms, and a tented field hospital was built in front of the entrance.
The United States recently recorded nearly 4,000 corona deaths in 24 hours. California has become one of the hot spots in the pandemic with around 2,500 deaths per week. On average, one person dies every 15 minutes in Los Angeles as a result of the virus disease. Currently, ambulances with Covid-19 patients are often traveling for hours in the second-largest metropolis in the US before finally finding a clinic with free beds.
Queue at a Corona test station: People belonging to minorities are particularly affected by Corona. (Source: Ringo Chiu / imago images)
Blacks and Latinos in particular fall ill with the corona virus
“If Los Angeles is the epicenter of the world, then this district is the epicenter of the Los Angeles crown,” says clinic director Elaine Batchlor. The patients here in the south of the city are mainly black and Latino, two population groups that were affected more than the average by the coronavirus in the United States: their excess death rates increased between 33 and 54 percent, according to a study. By contrast, the excess death rate among whites has increased by only about 12 percent.
Many of MLK Hospital’s patients work in exposed professions: as salespeople or on local public transportation. They often live in crowded conditions, making protection against infection nearly impossible. “We see entire families get sick at once,” says Arias, who comes from a Latino family and grew up in the neighborhood. “I could be one of them. It’s very tragic to see people who look like you die.”
More than 150 refrigerated trailers for storing corpses
Taylor Reed, who was working as a nurse in New York when clinics reached their limits due to the pandemic in the spring of last year, believes the current situation is even more dire: “This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” she says. 24 years.
In the spring, California was considered a role model in dealing with the pandemic. But that has already happened. Now paramedics in Los Angeles are instructed not to bring people with little chance of survival to clinics. And in light of the rising death toll, authorities have begun distributing more than 150 refrigerated trailers around the city to store bodies.
A refrigerated trailer in Los Angeles: Trailers are distributed throughout the city for temporary storage of bodies. (Source: Gene Blevins / ZUMA Wire / imago images)
The consequences of the Christmas holidays are yet to come
In the United States, about 365,000 deaths have been recorded since the pandemic began, more than in any other country in the world. Experts also attribute the latest spike to gatherings over the Thanksgiving holiday in late November. Also, the effects of Christmas days and all the family gatherings are likely to come soon and cause the numbers to rise again.
The head of the hospital, Batchlor, is concerned about the enormous pressure on health workers: “Our doctors and nurses in the intensive care unit assure me that they have the situation under control. But I am concerned because they have been under this pressure for so long”. National Guard medics recently joined the clinic’s overworked staff.
With all the stress, Nurse Arias tries to inform the families of all patients as regularly as possible. A few hours ago he called the family of an elderly woman whose condition was deteriorating. “I told them they had to come quickly,” says Arias. The family still did not arrive in time to say goodbye.
