Texas, San Antonio — This week, overflow tents were set up outside at least two Houston hospitals due to the overflow of coronavirus patients.
Hospitals in Austin were almost out of intensive care beds. A increase in viral instances in San Antonio led to the supplemental oxygen being linked to babies as young as two months old.
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Texas Hospitals Are Already Overloaded. Doctors Are ‘Frightened by What Is Coming.’
Since early February, when a late winter storm flooded the state’s healthcare system with patients, Texas has experienced an increase in the number of overburdened, overworked hospitals.
More than 10,000 Texans have been admitted to hospitals in the past several days, and this week the ICUs at at least 53 Texas hospitals have surpassed capacity.
If this continues, which I have no reason to think it would, my hospital won’t be able to handle it.
Cases in Florida
Cases increased earlier this summer in Florida, Louisiana, and Arkansas. According to state officials, the great majority of hospitalised patients in Texas are unvaccinated.
The effectiveness of masks has once again come to the public’s notice as a result of an abrupt increase in infection rates. This occurs at a time when Texas Governor Greg Abbott is steadfastly refusing to enforce any state regulations requiring masks.
Mr. Abbott has pleaded with healthcare professionals from other states to come to Texas and assist the overworked hospitals.
By the end of August, the state’s total number of coronavirus-related hospitalizations is anticipated to be well over 15,000, according to the Covid-19 model consortium at the University of Texas at Austin.
According to the doctor
According to the doctor who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorised to talk in public, at least 90% of the coronavirus patients have not received a vaccination.
Houston’s top medical officer, Dr. David Persse, attributed the outbreak on state officials’ failure to emphasise the value and urgency of vaccines while Texas Governor Greg Abbott framed it as a matter of individual rights.
Dr. Persse, he remarked, “It is the wrong strategy.” Because of the hyperbole surrounding this, there has been much discussion over the risks associated with individuals exercising their right to make their own judgments.
Mr. Abbott, like governors in Florida and other states in the South, maintained his stance despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advising that both vaccinated and unvaccinated persons wear masks indoors in high-risk locations.
His executive order prohibits local governments and school systems from imposing vaccinations or masks.
Nevertheless, despite Mr. Abbott’s orders, local officials in some of the state’s largest cities, including San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, and Austin, have issued additional mask regulations in public spaces, citing the virus’s unchecked spread and the state’s still insufficient vaccination rates. For adults 18 and older, Texas has a vaccination rate of roughly 56%.
According to the state health agency, there were almost 240 Texas children hospitalised on Tuesday due to the coronavirus.
President Biden said reporters on Wednesday that he was researching whether the federal government could interfere with Mr. Abbott’s state mandates, citing those figures.
Last Words
Dr. Norman Christopher, the hospital’s chief medical officer, claimed that the Delta variant and other respiratory illnesses were to blame for the unit being overcrowded with up to 15 Covid patients a day.
Dr. Christopher described a new phase in which “volumes are expanding much more exponentially here.” We’re doing fairly well compared to where we were a few months ago. Thanks for reading Texas Hospitals Are Already Overloaded. Doctors Are ‘Frightened by What Is Coming.’