But when the unpredictable coronavirus hits Espinoza, he turns from fever to chills to troublesome breathing that sends him to a hospital in Southern California, where he died Monday, a little more than a week after he was admitted.
Espinoza is one of the youngest to succumb to what has become the deadliest boom in California. An average of 544 people died every day over the past week, and on Saturday the state reached the bleak milestone of 40,000 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
In barely a year since the virus was first detected in the state, 1 in every 1,000 Californians has died from it.
Espinoza’s wife, Nancy, watched through a glass window in the hospital as her husband took his last breath, and was then allowed into the room to be with him. She is now figuring out what she needs to do next and how she will raise their three-year-old son alone.
“I had just as much confidence,” said Nancy Espinoza, who lives in a brutal coincidence in a city called Corona. “It would never have crossed my mind that it would be so serious, even though we hear about it all the time.”
The victims of COVID-19 were young and old, though mostly older. Some were fit and healthy, and many more had a variety of underlying medical conditions.
The death toll in California has climbed rapidly since the worst pandemic in October began. New cases and hospitalizations have risen to a record high, but have declined rapidly over the past two weeks.
However, deaths remain incredibly high, with more than 3,800 in the past week.
It took six months before California recorded its first 10,000 deaths, and then four months to 20,000. In just five weeks, the state reached 30,000. It then took only 20 days to reach 40,000.
Now there are only more deaths in New York – the deaths there have risen above 43,000 – but at this rate, California will also obscure it.
California has been a model for fighting the virus for much of the year. It closed for the first time in March last year and introduced an ever-changing number of restrictions that frustrated business owners but which, according to government officials, saved lives.
Business fell to a peak in July and then started climbing again in the fall. Government Gavin Newsom activated on November 16 what he called the ’emergency brake’ to stop the reopening of the state’s economy, keep most public schools closed, restrict indoor church services and limit the number of customers in stores.
But the coronavirus is already running along like a runaway train. With Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year, public health officials warned people not to gather with those outside their homes.
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Hospitalizations continued to skyrocket and on December 3, Newsom issued a home order dividing the state into five regions, requiring more businesses to close or reduce capacity if intensive care units in their region were to drop to 15%. Four regions with 98% of the state’s population have reached that level.
Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley regions were hit hardest, and some hospitals treated patients in corridors, cafeterias and gift shops. In Los Angeles, ambulances waited hours to drop off patients.
With the improvement of conditions, all regions are now under order, although there are still very strict restrictions.
Cases and deaths in California have hit people of color and poorer communities excessively, where families live in more crowded housing and among those without health insurance. Many also work in positions with a higher risk of exposure.
According to figures from the Department of Public Health, the death rate for Latinos is 20% higher than the national average. Deaths of black people are 12% higher. Business rates are 39% higher in communities with an average income of less than $ 40,000.
Los Angeles County, the most populous state with a quarter of the state’s nearly 40 million inhabitants, has more than 40% of the virus deaths in California. In November, the daily death toll in Latino was 3.5 per 100,000 inhabitants. That is now 40 deaths per 100,000, an increase of more than 1100%.
The death toll brought other gloomy signs. Morgues and funeral homes were overwhelmed and refrigerated trucks held corpses.
Maria Rios Luna said it took almost three weeks to retrieve her mother’s body from the hospital where she died in early January because there were 200 other bodies.
Her mother, Bernardina Luna de Rios, has always found ways to raise seven children herself after surviving a car wreck that killed her husband, she said.
Rios Luna, 22, said she had been particularly careful with her mother since the pandemic began. She carried hand sanitizer everywhere and immediately washed her hands on returning to the house they shared with her sister and two children.
SoCal family succumbs after 40-year-old mother of 3 children dies of COVID-19
She was the one who went to get groceries so that her mother, who was generally healthy outside of her rheumatoid arthritis, could stay home. But still, the virus found its home in Fontana.
Her 59-year-old mother was hospitalized and struggling to breathe and her condition worsened. Her mother told them not to worry, that she believed in God and that things were happening for a reason.
When her heart began to weaken, her children could see their mother through a window while a nurse was holding a phone in front of Bernardina’s ear so they could talk to her.
“When I first saw her in bed, it broke my heart,” Rios Luna said. “I’ve never seen my mother so vulnerable.”
After the visit, her mother’s liver stopped working, then her lungs. She died the next day.
“We feel like she was waiting for us to go see her,” Rios Luna said.
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