Skip to main content

A Texas hospital is so overrun with coronavirus cases that officials say it will send the patients least likely to survive home to die


A Texas county said it was forming a committee to decide which coronavirus patients were most likely to die and send them home to their families. Starr County Memorial Hospital is overrun with coronavirus cases, and hospitals elsewhere in Texas and in nearby states are also full, officials said. The county's health authority said the "situation is desperate" and "there is nowhere to put these patients." He said that for some patients "we believe they will be better taken care in the love of their own family and home rather than thousands of miles away dying alone." Starr County had successfully avoided a large outbreak in the pandemic's early days. Some officials said the Texas governor's decision to reopen the state was the reason for the surge. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. A hospital in Starr County, Texas, is so overrun with coronavirus cases that officials there said it would choose which patients to use its resources on and send those most likely to die back home to their families. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Dr. Jose Vasquez — the health authority for Starr County — said the county was creating guidelines to help health workers decide how to use resources on patients with the best chance of survival. Vasquez added that a committee would decide which patients were most likely to die at Starr County Memorial Hospital — the only hospital in the county — and would send them home. "The situation is desperate," he said Tuesday. "We cannot continue functioning in the Starr County Memorial Hospital nor in our county in the way that things are going. The numbers are staggering." Read more: There are 24 coronavirus vaccine candidates now in human trials. Here's how drugmakers see the race for a cure playing out in 2020. Vasquez said the county sends coronavirus patients daily to other parts of Texas and to other states, but that hospitals in both Texas and nearby states were now overwhelmed. A medical evacuation helicopter in Starr County, where coronavirus patients are being flown to other hospitals. KVEO/YouTube "There is nowhere to put these patients. The whole state of Texas and neighboring states have no ICU beds to spare for us," he said, Border Report reported. The decision is reminiscent of the decisions made by doctors in Italy in March, when that country was being ravaged by the virus. They said they had to choose who to save because of limited resources. Italy has since brought its outbreak under control. Texas has become a coronavirus hotspot in recent weeks, with more than 331,000 cases and 4,700 deaths recorded. Read more: Morgan Stanley just shared a detailed timeline of the coronavirus pandemic. Here's when analysts think the US will get a vaccine and let people return to work. "We are going to have these committees reviewing each case," Vasquez said. He added that for some patients, "We believe they will be better taken care in the love of their own family and home rather than thousands of miles away dying alone," CBS News reported. Starr County had successfully fought the coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic. But Vasquez said cases started to increase "in an exponential and alarming way" after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott decided to reopen the state from late April, CBS News reported. Jose Vasquez of the Starr County Health Authority during an interview about the county's coronavirus outbreak. KVEO/YouTube Joel Villarreal, the mayor of Rio Grande City — one of the cities in Starr County — said, "What we did here was a model for the rest of the nation to follow, but it was lost." Texas state data shows that the county, which has 64,000 residents, went from 642 coronavirus cases on July 1 to 1,519 cases on July 23. Starr County Judge Eloy Vera issued an emergency stay-at-home order because of the coronavirus on Wednesday. It said that people are "ordered to shelter-at-home in their residence" and that businesses are recommended and encouraged to suspend any activities that can't be done curbside, as a drive-thru, or as take-out. Vera also wrote on the county's Facebook page on Thursday that the county was "seeing the results of socialization during the 4th of July, vacations, and other social opportunities." "Unfortunately, Starr County Memorial Hospital has limited resources and our doctors are going to have to decide who receives treatment, and who is sent home to die by their loved ones," he said. "This is what we did not want our community to experience." He urged people to stay home: "We can turn this around in two weeks. WE CAN DO IT. STAY HOME as much as possible. God bless you."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wray: FBI deemed Jan. 6 attack domestic terrorism

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday that officials have classified the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by former President Trump Donald TrumpProsecutors focus Trump Organization probe on company's financial officer: report WHO official says it's 'premature' to think pandemic will be over by end of year Romney released from hospital after fall over the weekend MORE's supporters as domestic terrorism. "That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism," Wray told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Wray said the FBI has received more than 270,000 tips from Americans that have helped the bureau identify the numerous people who allegedly participated in the attack. ADVERTISEMENT "Citizens from around the country have sent us more than 270,000 digital media tips. Some have even taken the painful step of turning in their friends or their family members,” ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Matt Gaetz's ex-girlfriend to cooperate with federal authorities in sex trafficking investigation

Washington (CNN) Federal authorities investigating alleged sex trafficking by GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz have secured the cooperation of the congressman's ex-girlfriend, according to people familiar with the matter. The woman, a former Capitol Hill staffer, is seen as a critical witness, as she has been linked to Gaetz as far back as the summer of 2017, a period of time that has emerged as a key window of scrutiny for investigators. She can also help investigators understand the relevance of hundreds of transactions they have obtained records of, including those involving alleged payments for sex, the sources said. News of the woman's willingness to talk, which has not been previously reported, comes just days after the Justice Department formally entered into a plea agreement with Joel Greenberg, a one-time close friend of Gaetz whose entanglement with young women first drew the congressman onto investigators' radar. CNN reported last week that investigators were pressing for the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Biden Wants to Hire 87,000 Additional IRS Agents to Go After Wealthy Tax Dodgers

The Biden administration is proposing hiring 87,000 new workers for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), effectively doubling the agency’s size, as part of a plan to beef up enforcement efforts and find billions of dollars in tax revenues that go uncollected each year. Enforcement efforts would primarily target individuals and corporations with higher incomes and profits, the administration has suggested. The hiring, which would be part of President Joe Biden’s overall $80 billion spending plan to increase enforcement efforts at the IRS, would not happen all at once. Instead, it would be carried out in phases, with a 15 percent growth in employment at the agency per year until that 87,000 hiring benchmark is reached. The move would help recoup (and go beyond) some of the employment losses the agency has seen over the past decade, as the IRS has lost more than 33,000 workers over the past decade. The drop in employment at the agency has resulted in fewer audits, particularly for filers w...
Post a Comment
Read more