A poor farming region on the California-Mexico border that keeps American supermarkets stocked with vegetables is struggling deeply with the coronavirus. A doctor in blue scrubs hurries between homes and his clinics, providing help people desperately need.
CALEXICO, Calif. — Dr. Tien Vo’s last stop of the night is the home of a 35-year-old woman who has diabetes, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and, now, the coronavirus. The virus killed her father six days earlier. The oldest of her four children, a 15-year-old boy, learned he had it that morning.
Vo is “a rock star” for bringing medical services, says Alex Cardenas, a former mayor of El Centro, the county seat. The doctor’s two clinics have done more than 27,000 coronavirus tests since March 23, with a positive rate between 25% and 30%. To date, Imperial County has had more than 5,200 cases for every 100,000 people, nearly triple that of hard-hit Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest county. Nearly 20% of Imperial patients have tested positive, compared with 6.3% statewide.
There is no single reason for Imperial County’s plight, but inequalities loom large. It often has the highest unemployment rate among the nation’s 389 metropolitan areas. The jobless rate was 27.3% in June. Colorado River water gravitates through hundreds of canals along highways and dirt roads to the farms, getting saltier before it empties into the Salton Sea, California’s largest lake. It was once a desert playground for speedboat racers and Hollywood entertainers but now is evaporating as less water seeps down from the river.
Garcia, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is uncomfortable crossing the border daily to be around COVID-19 patients but, like many others, sees no alternative. A U.S. salary goes much further with Mexico’s cost of living and makes up for the scant wages her husband’s construction job pays in Mexicali. Vo’s clinic is just outside the sleepy downtown shopping area, which gives way to wide streets and large strip malls. President Donald Trump visited the city of 40,000 people last year to see his new border wall of 30-foot steel poles coated in black paint.
Part of the appeal is proximity to family in Southern California’s Orange County, a magnet for Vietnamese immigrants where they were raised as teenagers in the 1990s. Their parents still live there. The couple have two sons, 9 and 10.
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