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Diahuebs, 30 September 2021 AWEMainta.com 20

INTERN A TION AL

The California region where Covid

‘just isn’t slowing down’

The state has the country’s lowest case rate. But in the vaccine-resistant Central Valley

and rural north, healthcare workers are pushed to the limit

California has the lowest coronavirus case “I’m exhausted and just disappointed that we’re here,”
rate in the country. But within the state, the said Banh, an associate professor of clinical emergency

agricultural Central Valley and rural north medicine at UCSF Fresno. Banh has been taking on extra
remain overwhelmed. shifts in the emergency department and ICU, as well as
managing local vaccine clinics and testing centers that
Resistance to vaccines and public health earlier this month had lines that stretched a mile long.

mandates, combined with the advance of the
Delta variant, have triggered an explosion of The deluge of illness and death had been especially
cases that are pushing already strained public difficult to fathom because the surge “was preventable”,
health systems to the brink. In some counties, said Banh.

the case rate per 100,000 people is three or more The region has much lower vaccination rates than the
times that of the state. Bay Area or Los Angeles, and Banh regularly sees patients
who are on ventilators and still do not believe they have
At some healthcare facilities, critically ill patients Covid-19.

have waited for days to be transferred from the
emergency department to the ICU. Throughout
the valley, hospitals have reported having
less than 10% ICU capacity available since the

beginning of September. And while the number
of new cases appears to be slowing, healthcare
workers are bracing for more hard weeks as
patients continue to stream into hospitals.

On a typical day at the Community Regional
medical center, a hospital in Fresno, Dr Kenny
Banh says, patients are lined up outside on

ambulance gurneys, because there are no
hospital beds available. When he gets inside,
even more patients in gurneys line the hallway.

Photograph: Alex Horvath/AP

@BBC @CNN International @euronewsgreen

Algeria and Morocco have "For nearly a year the world General Milley also
speculated on the
reacted with anger to France's has paid comparatively little consequences of the withdrawal
attention to another brutal and
decision to slash the number of visas escalating conflict; the catastrophic from Afghanistan, saying that
for their citizens. violence in Ethiopia that is affecting "a reconstituted Al-Qaeda or
the lives of millions and imperiling ISIS with aspirations to attack
stability in the Horn of Africa." the United States is a very real
possibility."