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The National Guard has been deployed to hospitals in northern and central rural California, where small-staffed hospitals have been inundated with coronavirus patients – exposing stark disparities within the most populous US state.
Although California has the lowest rate of coronavirus cases in the country, its agricultural heartland in the Central Valley and its sparse rural north have case rates three or four times higher. National Guard medical teams have been deployed to several hospitals in Bakersfield and Kern counties, in the valley, and two hospitals in Shasta County, in the far north.
“This Delta-related push has been way beyond anything I thought we would be dealing with, especially with the widespread availability of the vaccine,” said Mary Lynn Briggs, intensive care nurse at Mercy Hospitals in Bakersfield, where a team of 16 National Guardsmen were deployed. She and her colleagues have been shot down by the steady wave of deaths, including the preventable deaths of unvaccinated young patients – and a few have recently left, she said. “I don’t know if I can still do it,” Briggs said.
In Shasta, which has one of the state’s highest coronavirus case rates, hospitals have also been hit by the nearby Fawn fire – which has forced thousands of people, including medical staff , to evacuate their home last week, said a spokesperson for hospitals in the area. the recording projector. In parts of the north and central valley, the introduction of the Delta variant and resistance to vaccines and public health warrants precipitated a wave of cases that overwhelmed emergency rooms and intensive services. Emergency dispatchers have been told not to send ambulances to patients unless they meet certain criteria, in order to avoid piling up outside hospitals.
The Valley and northern California, which had seen anti-mask protests throughout the pandemic, were the areas with the greatest support for a governors recall campaign that sought to overthrow the state governor, Gavin Newsom, in large part because of its pandemic trade restrictions, vaccine mandates, and other public health policies.
Even though the number of new cases is starting to decline in some areas, hospitals remain overloaded to treat Covid-19 patients.
Nurses, doctors and respiratory therapists all worked overtime, in some cases taking on multiple 18-hour shifts in a row. In some hospitals, patients waited days for intensive care beds and had to be treated for critical conditions in the emergency department while waiting. Exhausted and overwhelmed healthcare workers are constantly worried about making mistakes or failing patients, said Kenny Banh, associate professor of clinical emergency medicine at UCSF Fresno and emergency doctor at the city’s regional community medical center. of the Fresno Valley.
The National Guard has been deployed to other states with very high case rates, including Indiana and Georgia. In California, where high vaccination rates in coastal metropolises helped quell the tidal wave caused by the Delta, the National Guard was deployed in the winter to southern hospitals.
In the valley, agricultural workers – many of whom lack legal status and access to medical care – were hit hardest as the extra-infectious Delta variant began to circulate, and Latino residents and black people remain disproportionately affected. In rural areas where the number of doctors per capita was already two and a half times lower than that of the Bay Area, this latest surge has pushed the health care system to the brink of collapse. “We are a long way from collective immunity, and thinking of what lies ahead scares me to death,” said Mary Lynn Briggs, a nurse at one of the Bakersfield hospitals, where the National Guard has been deployed.
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