Orange County struggles with health equity — and battles state restrictions

Orange County struggles with health equity — and battles state restrictions

Yet the lack of solidarity among those representing the old and new Orange County has been disheartening, said Dr. José Mayorga, executive director of UCI Family Health Center, which treats primarily low-income Latinos in Santa Ana and Anaheim. At work, Mayorga delivers COVID diagnoses to patients, who cry at the news and fear they’ve already exposed loved ones to the virus. When he visits mostly white towns like Newport Beach or San Clemente, where he lives and his daughter is in school, many of those he encounters are maskless. It breaks his heart, Mayorga said. “People act like there’s nothing happening.”