Jose Roberto Alvarez, a worker at Mission Foods in Commerce in Los Angeles County, died from Covid-19 complications on July 20, 2020.
For Alisha Alvarez, the daughter of a high-risk essential worker, receiving the call that her parents had tested positive for COVID-19 was something she had feared for months, especially because of her father.
“On Sunday, [June] 28th, him and my mom went to go get tested and they were both positive,” Alvarez explained. “The minute I got that call, it was heart wrenching.”
Alvarez had major concerns about her dad, Jose Roberto Alvarez, 67, who was working full-time as the head of the maintenance team at Mission Foods, one of three locations shutdown by LA County Public Health on Sunday for failing to report outbreaks at their facilities.
“We told him, ‘Hey, Dad, you're in a high-risk category. We really have to be careful for you,” Alisha Alvarez recalls telling her father, who lived with diabetes and high blood pressure. “‘You have to tell your employer that you're high risk and you can't be at work,’ and he looked at me and said, 'Baby, I can't or I'll lose my job.'
By July 4, Jose Alvarez was admitted to the hospital.
“He was having fevers, fatigue, a cough, dry throat but then on July 4, he was admitted into the hospital with pneumonia,” Alisha Alvarez said. “Pneumonia quickly turned into ICU and a ventilator for about two weeks.”