Family underscores how fast virus spreads among Latinos
Paulina Barajas was the first in her family to get sick, with a sore throat that seemed to spread outward, numbing her sense of smell and taste.
Stress was already mounting for the Concord mother of five before she fell ill on Sept. 18, after spending the spring and summer mostly cloistered in her family’s threebedroom townhouse. Living off her husband’s parttime restaurant salary of $ 1,200 a month — along with a patchwork of government subsidies and donations from the local diocese — Barajas spent her days cooking and overseeing her sons’ distance learning.
She wanted to stave off the coronavirus at all costs. “I never went out to parties,” Barajas said in Spanish. “No reunions with friends. We were at home all day. We didn’t want to catch it.”
But once Barajas began
feeling symptoms, her children soon followed. Ambrot, 14, complained of muscle pain. Twelve-year-old Abram got a searing headache. Esau, the youngest at 2 years old, had a fever and rash on his chest and back.
Barajas’ husband, Sergio Martinez, continued working, grinding through a fever and nausea until he began wheezing on Oct. 4 — at which point Barajas took him to the emergency room. He tested positive for the coronavirus. Days later, Barajas and her three sick children confirmed they were positive as well. Her other two children, 16yearold Sergio and 9yearold Jacob, were spared.
The family came to represent many of the reasons that COVID19 is spreading faster among the Latino community, both in Contra Costa County, where Barajas lives, and statewide. Data released from Contra Costa Public Health Department shows that Latino residents comprise 43% of all COVID19 cases in the county, even though they account for only 26% of the population. Across California, Latinos account for 61% of cases and nearly 49% of deaths, even though they represent less than 39% of residents.
“We think the disparity has to do with these socioeconomic factors,” said Dr. Ori Tzvieli, deputy health officer for Contra
Costa County. He and other experts noted that many Latinos work in essential, lowwage jobs that don’t offer sick leave or other protections. Many may feel pressured to continue working for economic reasons even when they feel sick.
A new UC San Francisco study concluded that the number of Spanishspeaking Latino families in the Bay Area who can’t afford balanced meals, or who go to bed hungry, more than doubled during the pandemic. The researchers also found that food insecurity leads to a higher risk of coronavirus infection.
The cost of housing in the Bay Area has forced large families like Barajas’ to live in relatively tight quarters. Her four older sons share two bedrooms with bunk beds, while Esau, the toddler, sleeps in a crib next to his parents. Their home is wedged in a complex of neatly packed, brown stucco buildings, separated by small courtyards and sections of lawn.
When Contra Costa County began doing contact tracing, officials saw the housing affordability crisis interlock with the public health crisis. In some cases, several intergenerational families shared a single dwelling, which made it easy to turn one infection into a cluster.
“All it takes is one person to bring it in and then a large number of people will get infected,” Tzvieli said. “That’s the intersection of COVID19, poverty and expensive housing costs in the Bay Area.”
Like other health officials, Tzvieli worries the situation will get much worse as the weather gets colder, with the cascading effects of flu season, people spending more time indoors, the easing of restrictions and the increasing economic desperation.
Counties are scrambling to address these problems with budgets deeply scarred from the economic shutdown. San Francisco set up a righttorecover program with private donations, which provides 80 hours of minimum wage earnings — $ 16.07 an hour — for any sick worker who has to quarantine for two weeks. Similarly, Contra Costa County has an emergency relief fund to help people who face a sudden crisis related to COVID19. It’s partially supported by philanthropic dollars from The Chronicle’s Season of Sharing fund.
By last week the family felt better, but new uncertainty set in. Martinez was still off work, and the family had no means to pay rent in November. Abram’s soccer team had barred him from participating in a tournament, scheduled to take place Oct. 22 in Arizona. Barajas said she didn’t know how to get food for her sons while in quarantine.
Friends and charities came to help the family, whom The Chronicle followed for a story this spring. Claudia Ramirez, executive director of the Soci
ety of St. Vincent de Paul in Contra Costa County, dropped off groceries at Paulina’s house on Wednesday night. The Chronicle’s Season of Sharing fund may cover her family’s rent in November. Without a more stable safety net, Barajas will survive the way she has for months, by approaching one charity after another.
Ramirez said she is seeing more and more families who live in these precarious circumstances, in spite of the protections that counties have set up. The state has an eviction moratorium in place through the end of the year, but it requires tenants to submit a form to their landlord each month, and keep careful records of why they cannot pay rent. Such documentation is difficult for people who don’t speak English or don’t have access to technology, Ramirez said.
At the same time, distance learning has created greater burdens for parents who have to work at essential jobs, and children doing their schoolwork in crowded households, where they often have no choice but to inconvenience an adult.
“I know that the holidays are going to be really tough,”
Ramirez said. “Our churches are modifying how we normally do the holiday program — there won’t be a tree in the back of the church to buy a gift for a child. All of that is gone.”
She sighed. “We’re trying to bring normalcy back to people, and it’s so frustrating.”
On Friday, Barajas seemed more upbeat. Ramirez had brought laundry detergent, along with enough food to cook a chicken and spinach dinner for her family. The boys seemed healthy now and were asking her to order pizza.
“And I say no, no, no, we have no money right now,” Barajas said with a laugh.
Her sons have learned to accept “no” for an answer. They just hope their next coronavirus test, set for Oct. 25, will be negative.