Roots Community Health Center was slammed in 2020, with lines for its COVID-19 testing stations stretching around the block and exam rooms full of people struggling to breathe.
Patient after patient at the East Oakland clinic extended their fingers so that healthcare workers could clip on a pulse oximeter , a device that measures the degree to which red blood cells are saturated with oxygen. For healthy people, a normal “pulse ox” reading is typically between 95% and 100%.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had instructed providers to give oxygen therapy to any COVID patient with a pulse oximeter reading below 90%. Like their counterparts around the country, Roots doctors advised concerned patients to buy inexpensive pulse oximeters so they could monitor their levels at home.
As the pandemic ground on, it became clear that Black and brown patients were dying of COVID at disproportionately high rates , both across the U.S. and in Roots’ own Alameda County .