Rural California county needs doctors, beds as coronavirus cases surge - Business Insider

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Hospitals in a rural California county near the Mexican border are 'bursting at the seams' as 20 percent of patients test positive for the coronavirus

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Tilted back in a reclining chair at her bedside using an oxygen device, Cynthia Reyes tells the doctor she can no longer stand up herself. Vo and his wife, a nurse, emigrated from Vietnam as teenagers. They drifted west from New York to settle 10 years ago in Imperial County, which produces a major share of vegetables in U.S. supermarkets during the winter.

Deaths have reached 220 in a county with about 180,000 residents. San Francisco has five times the population but two-thirds fewer deaths. Imperial is 85% percent Latino, with elevated rates of diabetes and obesity. Wind-blown dust contributes to asthma. Its 21% poverty rate is among California's highest. Crowded, multigeneration households spread the virus quickly.

The lake's shores occasionally are blanketed with the carcasses of oxygen-starved tilapia, while dust from newly exposed lakebed is kicked up by desert winds, helping explain why air quality in the area violates federal standards. "Everybody's scared of the pandemic, but we have to cross," Garcia said after pulling out her travel documents for U.S. border inspectors at the end of a hallway, where a guitarist sang Mexican ballads for morning commuters. "We have to survive."

Cars filled Vo's parking lot when he began drive-through virus testing in March. He soon began taking walk-ins, with lines wrapping around his building.

 

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