By Xenia Shih Bion, California Health Care Foundation, October 19, 2020
When California’s statewide stay-at-home order took effect in March, Orlando Ruiz lost his job at a landscaping company, and he panicked because he was the only full-time worker in his household. Ruiz, who emigrated from Guatemala seven years ago, shares a house in East Oakland with his wife and two children, his two brothers, and his parents.
His brothers assured him that they could cover the rent with part-time jobs, but then the brother who worked as an apartment janitor got COVID-19. The virus spread through the house, and Ruiz’s father, wife, and other brother all tested positive. Three of them were hospitalized, including Ruiz’s father, who was an inpatient for two weeks. “Now we’re scared to leave the house and go outside, because we don’t want to go through that again,” Ruiz told Madeline Bair of El Tímpano. (El Tímpano, a community-driven media project serving Latinx residents of East Oakland, produced this piece for The Oaklandside.)
Fifty-five percent of Latinx workers have essential jobs in industries such as agriculture, construction, and food services, and “this population doesn’t have the luxury like you or I to stay at home,” Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, MD, PhD, founding director of the UC Davis Center for Reducing Health Disparities, told Susan Abram of the USC Center for Health Journalism.
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