In several areas of Texas the health situation due to the delta variant of the coronavirus worries the entire United States.
Is that in Texas the problem is due to that the health care system has been overtaken by the number of people suffering from complications arising from COVID delta variant.
In this state, 14,700 people were hospitalized on September 1st, A number just below the record set in January when a winter COVID wave wreaked havoc across the United States.
“In previous waves, we had a little over 750 patients. We are now serving between 820 and 850“That’s why hospitals are full,” he told AFP Agency, Roberta Schwartz, executive vice president of Houston Methodist Hospital, which is a grouping of medical centers.
Houston. Doctors treat a patient with COVID. Photo / file
The situation is so critical in Houston who have had to adapt a conference room to treat patients.
The situation of rural places overflowing by COVID patients in Texas
Because of this saturation of clinics and hospitals, rural health sites in the state they have been forced to keep patients on their premises yet they do not have the necessary equipment for their care.
“Our staff and our doctor worked tirelessly for six hours trying to transfer him to a tertiary care center anywhere, ”said Daniel Bonk Fache, CEO of Bellville Medical Center, overwhelmed with patients.
“We get calls every day from hospital executives desperately trying to find a place to refer these patients.“John Henderson told AFP. president of the Texas Rural and Community Hospitals Organization.
Texas has scattered 158 rural medical centers, More than any other state in the country.
John Henderson says that “every day of this week we have had a situation that does not end well and results in the death of the patient“.
Health workers overwhelmed at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston. Photo / AFP
The state of health personnel in Texas
Hospital staff feel powerless and overwhelmed by the frantic search for free beds in larger and equipped hospitals.
“‘We lost‘To a nurse every day because she has to call all the hospitals“Renee Poulter, who heads the nursing staff at the Bellville Clinic, told AFP.” It takes hours, if not all day, to call all the hospitals across the state of Texas. “
And it is in this context that improvisations arise. For example, the Bellville facility they are not made to house an intensive care unitBut in the face of need he had to design one.
“We have a critical patient, positive of COVID, which requires intensive care and which we have been attending to for 11 days in our rural facility because we can’t find him a higher level of care, ”Poulter confessed.
How the state of Texas helps rural hospitals in the face of the COVID crisis
To help these overcrowded rural care centers, Texas has provided respirators, oxygen, and other means to stabilize patients. It is also incorporating nurses from other states.
Two of those aides showed up last week in Bellville, one from Pennsylvania and one from Alabama. Each works six shifts a week.