Although California has the lowest coronavirus case rate in the country, its agricultural heartland in the Central Valley and its sparse, rural north have case rates that are three or four times higher. National guard medical teams have been deployed to several hospitals in the valley’s Bakersfield and Kern counties, and to two hospitals in Shasta county in the far north.
“This Delta-related surge has been far beyond anything I thought we would be dealing with, especially with the wide availability of the vaccine,” said Mary Lynn Briggs, an ICU nurse at Mercy hospitals in Bakersfield, where a team of 16 national guard have been deployed. She and her colleagues have been beaten down by the constant surge of deaths, including the preventable deaths of unvaccinated younger patients – and a few have recently left, she said. “I don’t know if I can even do this any more,” said Briggs.
In Shasta, which has one of the highest coronavirus case rates in the state, hospitals have also been affected by the nearby Fawn fire – which forced thousands, including medical staff, to evacuate their homes last week, a spokesperson for hospitals in the region told the Record Searchlight. Across swaths of the north and the Central Valley, the introduction of the Delta variant and resistance to vaccines and public health mandates have precipitated a surge of cases that have overwhelmed emergency rooms and intensive departments. Emergency dispatchers have been asked not to send out ambulances to patients unless they meet certain criteria, to avoid pile-ups outside hospitals.
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