El Centro, California (CNN)Coronavirus is winning the battle in El Centro, California. It’s in almost every patient in the hospital. Tents are being put up to handle even more cases. It’s on the streets, forcing rescuers to put on protective suits and cumbersome masks before they approach people needing help. And it’s not stopping. Even as nearby and faraway facilities take patients to try to ease the load, more and more sick people keep coming. And so do the deaths. The workers are exhausted. The virus is not.
It’s loud inside the large blue tent at El Centro Regional Medical Center. Cooled air is blasting through two giant vents to counter the summer heat. Nurses half yell instructions in English and Spanish through their N95 masks and face shields to be heard by patients and each other.The tents fill half the parking lot at the hospital — the most visible sign of the uncontrolled spread of Covid-19 in Imperial County in the far southeast of California, bordering Arizona and Mexico. The death rate here is the highest in the state.
Hospital CEO Adolphe Edward watches as people suspected of having coronavirus are assessed outside his 161-bed hospital, where he says nearly 90% of patients have tested positive for Covid.
