As the pandemic continues its July battering of the Lone Star State, hospitals in numerous counties are scrambling. Some are pressed to keep up with what’s happening right now. Others are preparing for a surge they expect to arrive sometime soon.
And reports are arriving of filled hospitals turning away transfers, backlogged ambulances waiting hours to transport patients and shorthanded staffs appealing for relief workers.
The sweeping update comes from the Texas Tribune, which has rounded up a representative sampling of scenes uncovered by three separate reporters.
In South Texas, for example, the team found two hospitals that that “keep opening new units to care for critically ill patients” as others pack ER hallways, presumably on gurneys and in wheelchairs.
“There’s nothing else other than COVID,” Dr. Jamil Madi, medical director of the ICU at Harlingen Medical Center, tells the newspaper. “You treat COVID, you look at COVID, you see COVID, you smell COVID, you hear COVID. Everything’s COVID.”
Describing the mental state of hospital staff in this environment, he says it’s like living in “two parallel worlds—the world inside the hospital and the world outside. … We need people to understand that it is a dire situation going on inside the hospital.”
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Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.