California, and especially the Bay Area, continue to make remarkable progress against COVID-19, with fewer people in the hospital and steadily dropping rates of transmission, But there are pockets of the state where the opposite is true. In the far northern part of the state and in the Central Valley, vaccination rates remain low and hospitals are overwhelmed.

In Fresno, ICUs are packed and there’s a shortage of hospital beds and ambulances. The delta variant continues to surge there and the pandemic remains an urgent crisis.

For more, KCBS political reporter Doug Sovern and KCBS news anchors Patti Reising and Kris Ankarlo spoke with DR. Kenny Banh. He is an associate professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine at UCSF, Fresno, pulling extra shifts in the ER at the trauma center there and he also directs the Mobile Health and Learning COVID-19 Equity Project, so he manages the region’s largest vaccination and testing site.