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Humberto Agurcia only has a smile.
The paramedical Raised in Mexico and with 25 years of experience, he has never stopped attending emergencies from his hometown, Los Ngeles, became the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States at the end of November.
Workers like him are the first to establish contact with patients.
They are also the first in the difficult position of refusing family members to take ambulances with sick relatives to hospital.
Ambulances had to wait up to 12 hours so that patients are admitted to the most overwhelmed hospitals.
In Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States, a person dies from covid-19 every six minutes.
“Yes, it is unusual for this to happen in the United States. But, despite being such an advanced country, this virus does not forgive technology or development,” Agurcia says.
The following is a first-person summary of what Agurcia experienced in this pandemic, the first case of which in the United States was detected a year ago, the January 20, 2020.
The only thing that keeps us going from day to day is our attitude, our smile. They will rarely see us defeated.
It’s the only thing we need to be able to track from a baby who died in a fire, from a mother who gave birth, to someone who died from covid-19.
When you are done attending to an emergency, what matters most is the next emergency.
I was born in Los Angeles 51 years ago, although my parents took me to live in the city of Guadalajara when I was only two years old.
I stayed until I was 18, then wanted to pursue my dreams of a firefighter and came back to Los Angeles.
It was very difficult to get into the fire department and it took me several years. I have passed all possible tests and I became a paramedic in 1995.
I’m about to turn 20 working in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States.
And I’m telling you something: I have never experienced anything like this in my life.
It is also said by many colleagues who have 30 years in this career. Hospitals are full up to the number of patients.
We were inundated with emergency calls.
The waits in the hospitals have been several hours to be able to dispatch the patients and for them to be admitted.
In the area where I work, we have five relatively close hospitals and they are all very full. In some there were ambulances waiting outside in the parking lot for 8, 10, 12 hours …
I had to be in ambulance lines They last for several hours and I tell patients from the start that we may have to wait a long time.
It is not easy, sometimes they tell us that the situation is not comfortable and that they want to be treated immediately.
This situation caused us to work several hours longer than normal. Right now it hits us a lot because we had many sick firefighters.
A normal shift lasts 24 hours, but sometimes we do 48, 72 hours … tired, but already used to it.
I was one of those sick firefighters and between July and August I couldn’t work.
I was at the hospital one night with pneumonia and luckily I was quickly released.
My wife, who also works in ambulances and frequents the city, fell ill at the same time as I did, but better faster.
During the first week of January, the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency issued a directive to paramedics asking them not to transfer patients with very little chance of survival.
Although agency officials explained that the directive represented a “relatively minor change” to standard procedures, the move was adopted as a reminder to do everything possible on site before a transfer to hospitals. at the edge of the border.
There were days, most of them in December and early January, when deaths from the coronavirus in Los Angeles exceeded the number of deaths from other causes.
Los Angeles County reached 400,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in late November. In just two months, the county has already the million infections.
As of Monday, January 18, the county had nearly 14,000 dead, twice as many as in countries like Saudi Arabia, and almost the same number as in Ecuador.
One of the things that has changed in our work that has affected us a lot is having to be the first to tell patients’ families that they can’t come in the ambulance.
My mom was also in the hospital in intensive care for four months very sick with covid-19 and at one point we thought “Hey, we’re going to die without seeing her.”
I remember that every day here at work, I understand how difficult it is not to be able to accompany my grandfather, my mother, my father. People get angry sometimes, because obviously they are very affected by the situation. I think, of all, it’s one thing I’ll never forget in life.
The pandemic It hit the Latino community a lot And the only difference I notice when I attend these emergencies is that sometimes there are more people in the house because they live several generations in the same house.
California was the first state to implement a lockdown measure in the United States when the pandemic began to rage last year, but millions of workers in the huge economy consider themselves essential and they had to continue working in sectors such as agriculture and services.
Experts point out that density In the city of Los Angeles, where the same dwelling can be occupied by several families, this is one of the reasons for the disproportionate increase in infections in the past two months.
The Hispanic population has experienced deaths like no other.
The Latino death rate is 193 per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 115 in the black population and 68 in the non-Hispanic white population.
And for every two people who die in the affluent city of Bel Air, more than 230 people die in East Los Angeles, a predominantly Hispanic region.
Yes, it is unusual to think that this could happen in the United States. But even though it is such an advanced country, there are a lot of people and a lot of people traveling too.
It was no surprise that an international pandemic struck so hard here. This virus does not forgive technology or development.
At the train station, we always have to wear a mask and we cannot sit down to eat together.
At the moment, there is a great movement to try to help each other and thus manage as much as possible. mental problems.
Suicide is a big problem in the rescue community in the United States.
After a really loud call, we get together to talk and see who might need more attention after that.
We have, like many tragedies, stories that are very beautiful. Letters are brought to the station thanking us for taking care of Grandma, who is already back home, and so on.
We are still in the middle of a pandemic, the situation is still not calming down.
And here to be complete my shifts.
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