Texas is now one of the worst affected states for new coronavirus cases in the US.
Nearly 80% of the state’s hospital beds are in use, and intensive care units are filling up in some of the nation’s biggest cities, including San Antonio and Houston, where leaders are warning their health facilities could become overwhelmed in the coming days. In all, Texas has recorded more than 2,670 deaths and more than 200,000 confirmed cases of the virus.
Nomaan Merchant has been reporting from Houston for Associated Press on what the situation is like on the ground there – and how relaxing restrictions on gatherings appears to have contributed to the new cases.
He cites the example of one family. A few weeks after more than 100 people attended one man’s funeral, his wife herself was on the brink of death.
Her oxygen levels had fallen deadly low due to complications from Covid-19, and her heart stopped. Ten people, each in two layers of protective equipment, reports Merchant, surrounded her hospital bed. Two climbed on opposite sides of the bed one pressing on her chest, the other on her abdomen. At the foot of the bed, Dr. Joseph Varon called out a rhythm: one-two, one-two, one-two.
“Keep on pumping!” he yelled. But they couldn’t save her.
At least 10 people who were at the funeral later developed coronavirus symptoms, according to the woman’s daughter, who fell sick herself. Most people weren’t wearing masks. Her daughter says her mother told her she wished they had been more careful.
“We didn’t take precautions like we should have,” the daughter told Merchant. “We just got totally caught up in the moment.”
Now, says Merchant, the 66-year-old Latina woman’s death is a grim warning for Texas, which has seen a surge in the number of people testing positive for the coronavirus since it began aggressively loosening restrictions in May.
Hospitalizations due to Covid-19 in the state have more than doubled in the last two weeks, and Texas is reporting, on average, more than four times as many cases each day as it was a month ago. It surpassed 10,000 new confirmed cases in a single day Tuesday.
While rising case numbers partly reflect more testing, Texas has a positive test rate of 13.5%, more than double the rate from a month ago.
“We’re going to get into situations like Italy did, like Spain did, like New York did just a couple of months ago,” said Varon, board chair at United Memorial Medical Center, a small north Houston hospital.
United Memorial has been rapidly dedicating more and more space to virus care. Now, 88 of 117 beds are devoted to such patients and Varon says the hospital may soon turn over the entire facility to treating those with the virus.
Outside, the Associated Press reports, long lines of cars wait hours for tests.
The hospital has taped off three separate wings with a sequence of large tarps and gates.
Assisting Varon is a team of nurses and volunteer medical students. Anyone seeing a patient with Covid-19 is required to wear two sets of masks, gowns, gloves, shoe and head coverings, and a face shield.
Varon has worked more than 100 days with barely a rest and normally sleeps just a few hours a night. When he isn’t seeing patients or trying to obtain more hospital supplies, he does media interviews to encourage people to wear masks and take the virus seriously.
“People need to see this so they can understand and won’t do stupid things,” he said.
