Military nurses, tests coming to help hard-hit Arizona city

PHOENIX (AP) — Exhausted nurses in rural Yuma, Arizona, regularly send COVID-19 patients on a long helicopter ride to Phoenix when they don't have enough staff. The so-called winter lettuce capital of the U.S. also has lagged on coronavirus testing in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods and just ran out of vaccines.

But some support is coming from military nurses and a new wave of free tests for farmworkers and the elderly in Yuma County — the hardest-hit county in one of the hardest-hit states.

Almost everyone in Yuma County, near the borders of Mexico and California, seems to know somebody who has tested positive for COVID-19, with around 33,000 cases reported since last spring — a rate of about 14,000 per 100,000 people. Maricopa County, the largest in Arizona and home to Phoenix, has a rate of about 9,000 cases per 100,000 people.

Yuma County's soaring numbers come as Arizona's COVID-19 diagnosis rate ranked the worst in the U.S. over the past week, at one in every 120 people.

“It’s had a significant impact on the community,” said Dr. Robert Trenschel, president and CEO of Yuma Regional Medical Center, the area’s only acute care hospital. “We’re still likely to see another peak from New Year’s celebrations.”

Tests in Yuma County are 20% positive, compared with about 14% for Arizona. The Arizona State Department of Health Services reported Sunday that 633 people had died in the county with a population of about 215,000

Of the 124 COVID-19 patients hospitalized as of Friday, 28 were in intensive care, according to local health statistics.

Officials at Yuma Regional Medical Center say it's been a struggle to maintain staffing of 900 to 1,000 nurses while competing for medical workers in an overwhelmed national health care system.

To ensure each...