Even then, she says she is sometimes awakened with thoughts of "How long are we going to sustain this? How long are we going to be faced with this every day?"

Davis is the nursing director at Eisenhower Health in Rancho Mirage, California, a desert town in Riverside County about 100 miles from Los Angeles. She and her colleagues are nearing exhaustion as a surge of coronavirus cases has nearly overwhelmed the staff there.

"Up until this (coronavirus outbreak), on my unit we would for the most part possibly lose one patient a year," she said. "We have had 40 deaths on our unit. However, we've treated over 700 patients."

With a death count far beyond anything anyone in her unit has ever seen in such a short time, she said the staff are emotionally and physically spent.

"We actually agreed as a staff, if we were comfortable with it, we would ensure that a patient would not die alone. So, we would take turns spending time with them and holding their hands and talking to them," Davis said.

A medical team from the US Air Force was sent to the hospital to assist with the surge of patients.

California was moving in the right direction

This was not how Davis envisioned what would normally be a sleepy summer in her town. California appeared to be moving in the right direction when it came to Covid-19.

It was the first state to impose a stay-at-home order on March 19. Less than two months later, on May 8, the numbers had fallen enough that the state started the first phase of reopening.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom told his citizens,"You have bent the curve."

But then Memorial Day came around. By early June the numbers started creeping back up. The seven- day average for daily coronavirus cases totaled more than 2,600. Then they skyrocketed.

By July 11, the seven-day average had risen to 9,400 new cases of coronavirus per day, a more than 250% increase. The numbers fluctuate daily but the trend shows California is in surge. By July 13, Newsom ordered the shutdown of bars, indoor dining, movie theaters, wineries and some other businesses across the state again. So what went wrong?

Anne Rimoin, an epidemiology professor at the University of California Los Angeles, says the answer is simple. Some governments and people became complacent.

"You know, we opened up too soon. We didn't have the virus totally under control," Rimoin said.

But, she added, "People are not following the rules. They're not wearing masks. They're not social distancing. They're not doing what it is that they need to do."

At one point places like Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties, stopped requiring masks. But the governor eventually stepped in and mandated masks statewide in late June.

In Orange County, which borders Los Angeles County, about 100 people attended a county Board of Supervisors meeting in mid-June to speak their minds about a mask mandate that had been in place just two weeks. Every speaker except one wanted the mask mandate elimi

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