When the novel coronavirus first appeared, health officials around the globe were unsure of how to proceed. How does it spread? Does it live on surfaces? For how long? Do masks work? Can we stop the spread? How can we save lives?
In Long Beach, it was no different, Health Department Director Kelly Colopy recalled—the fear and stress of the unknown.
“We’re here, we’re ready to respond to some sort of public health emergency, but we didn’t know what that emergency was, what our capacities in the city were,” Colopy said.
On March 9, 2020, Long Beach officials announced the first local cases of COVID-19: Two men and one woman. With its own health department, Long Beach was prepared to handle emergency situations, but the department’s team for communicable disease and emergency response was composed of just 10 people.
Unfortunately, the team and any preparation for health crises proved woefully inadequate in the face of the new virus.
Those first three patients were infected by people outside the city, officials said at the time, but soon community spread began. Colopy, along with Mayor Robert Garcia and other officials, began holding daily video conferences to provide updates.
Colopy recalled sitting in the city’s Emergency Operations Center day after day, watching cases, hospitalizations and deaths rise, then having to relay that information to city officials and the general public.
“I started to pay attention to those who were being impacted the most and what was happening to our hospitals, and there was just this ongoing story that each day looked worse than the day before,” said Colopy, who lost two people close to her to the virus.
“I just remember sitting there and there were some days you could barely lift your head up off the table because of the absolute, complete exhaustion dealing with the unknown,” she added.
Over the course of the next two years, Long Beach, along with the rest of the world, would endure wave after wave of the virus.
Even before the coronavirus first appeared in Long Beach, health officials began meeting with emergency management, the Long Beach police and fire departments and other agencies to prepare infrastructure necessary during a health crisis, Colopy said. The preparation paid off when the virus finally arrived, she said, but it quickly became clear that it was not enough.
“I don’t think anybody expected things to get as awful as they did,” said Garcia, whose mother and stepfather died from the virus in the summer of 2020. “It’s been a rough two years for so many families.”
When COVID-19 first began to spread around the world, the Long Beach Health Department began tracking it, Colopy said. But no one could have predicted the devastating impacts it would have, she said.
Since the onset of the pandemic, Long Beach health officials have reported 1,233 coronavirus-related deaths as of data reported today. Since the first three cases two years ago, 124,874 Long Beach residents have tested positive for the disease.
Colopy said the department was forced to quickly realign more than 100 city staff to focus on the coronavirus response, including training workers to do contact tracing to figure out how the virus was being spread.
The pandemic has been a rollercoaster of fear and relief. Hospitals filled up, then the number of cases eased, only to come back even worse than before with new variants. The fall of 2020 saw a drastic rise in cases followed by hospitalizations and deaths in the winter, which was one of the darkest periods for the city.
New cases began to increase drastically in November and December 2020 across Los Angeles County. City and county health officials warned that increased hospitalizations and deaths would likely follow weeks after the surge in cases.
The number of people hospitalized with the virus in Long Beach-area hospitals peaked at 581 on Jan. 12, 2021. The local health system could hardly sustain that number of patients and the hospitals began convening triage teams tasked with deciding which patients would receive life-saving care if resources became too scarce.
“We had people dying in hospitals, we had businesses losing employees, we had folks angry about schools and businesses being closed—all this happening at once,” Garcia said. “People were scared.”
In mid-December 2020, the city had reported 295 deaths. By the time the surge began to wane three months later, the number of coronavirus-related deaths in Long Beach had tripled to 882.
Two weeks later, after the city surpassed 900 COVID-19 deaths, Garcia announced the city would create a memorial for all who have died—a place where anyone, but especially loved ones, could go to reflect and remember those who succumbed to the virus. In May, the city officially began the process of creating the memorial, which includes community input.
On Sept. 17, the city reported its 1,000th COVID-19 death.
“I’ve met so many people that have lost family … during the pandemic and I have found comfort in talking to them and understanding what they’re going through,” Garcia said. “And I hope that I’ve been able to provide the same kind of comfort to them.”
Today, the city unveiled its digital memorial, which includes photos and descriptions of dozens of people who have died from the virus, submitted by their families.
In winter and spring 2021, vaccines became available. Having already been through the process of setting up testing sites, the city was quickly able to transition to administering the jabs that have proven to be effective at significantly reducing the risk of hospitalization and death should a person contract the virus, Colopy said.
Across the U.S., vaccine rollouts were clunky as states and cities struggled with limited supply and a lack of infrastructure to get them into people’s arms. However, Long Beach gained national attention.
“Not only did Long Beach have a great response, we were a national model,” Garcia said.
Once vaccine supplies caught up with demand and vaccination rates in Long Beach and across the state increased, it was time for the state to reopen on June 15, 2021. Californians heaved a collective sigh of relief as the end of the pandemic finally seemed near. But less than two weeks later the delta variant emerged.
The new strain of the virus created a new influx of cases, however it was nowhere near the level of the crisis months earlier. Similarly, hospitalizations and deaths saw a boost that was well below the winter surge.
In December, the city reported its first case of a third variant—omicron—which first appeared in Africa the month before. The mutated virus was highly transmissible and cases quickly began to rack up: throughout most of January, Long Beach health officials reported between 1,000 and 7,900 new cases per day—far more than at any point throughout the pandemic.
The fear, of course, was that an extreme rise in hospitalizations and deaths similar to the previous winter was to follow. Though there was an increase in both, neither was nearly as serious.
With few exceptions, Garcia said Long Beach residents were “incredible” during the pandemic, pulling together to do what was right—abiding stay-at-home orders, social distancing, wearing masks in public and even shuttering businesses when necessary.
“Folks did what they needed to do,” Garcia said. “We had some rough moments but for the most part people followed the mandates and … kept people safe.”
But not everyone has been on board with health recommendations and mandates, Colopy said, a fact that is most evident in vaccines. She said that it was difficult working in a situation that, regardless of the work done, many people were inevitably going to die. But the hardest deaths to cope with, Colopy said, are those that came after the vaccines became widely available.
“In many cases, it’s avoidable,” Colopy said. “It’s more difficult to work in a space when you know there are life-saving vaccines that many people who end up in the hospital chose not to take.”
Through the devastation of the past two years, Colopy said a lot has been gained with regard to the city’s emergency response. Lessons learned from ramping up testing and vaccine administration can be applied to future emergencies as can the partnerships between city departments, agencies and institutions that grew stronger amid the pandemic.
Additionally, improvements to data sharing between the city, county and state, as well as the city and the public, were greatly improved throughout the pandemic, Colopy said.
“We’re always going to have to live with COVID, that’s certainly something that is in our future, but I think we’re in a place now where we are able to manage it moving forward,” Garcia said. “It’s been a tough couple of years but I am feeling hopeful about the future.”