EDINBURG — The departure of nurses now working for higher-paying agencies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has left hospitals in the Rio Grande Valley with a shortage of nursing staff as hospitalizations continue to climb.
County health officials pleaded with Valley nurses to “re-engage” with assisting local hospitals to care for patients admitted for COVID-19, which as of Wednesday made up 26% of all hospitalizations in the county.
“The most difficult resource that is not available to us is the human resource. The human resource are the nurses,” said Dr. Ivan Melendez, the Hidalgo County health authority. “The nurses have left, the nurses have gone to other places because there are many who have been following the COVID virus around the country.”
During the first wave of the pandemic, agencies that contracted with the Texas Department of State Health Services recruited nurses who were then deployed to COVID “hotspots.”
“I don’t blame them, their salaries are 5 times, 7 times what they would get here, and so we can’t blame someone because they’re going to move because they have life-changing salaries,” Melendez said, “and so the result is that out of almost 2,000 beds that we’re licensed for in our hospital, we only have enough staff for about half of that, for about 1,000.”
He clarified that the hospitals are not overflowing to the point where they can’t tend to people with other health problems.
“But our beds are becoming in jeopardy, our numbers are dramatically exploding,” Melendez said.
In addition to hospitalizations, the numbers of cases and deaths are also reaching grim milestones.
Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez said the total number of positive cases in the county was nearing 100,000 and the total number of COVID-19 related deaths was on the verge of surpassing 3,000.
On Thursday, the county reported a total of 390 new cases of which 197 were of individuals younger than 19 and 173 were younger than 50, according to Eddie Olivarez, the chief administrator for the county’s health and human services department.
As of Thursday morning there were 315 COVID hospitalizations which made up about 30% of the total staffed beds, Olivarez said.
He added that 17 of those cases were pediatric and seven of those individuals were being treated in intensive care units.
Of all those 315 patients in the hospital for COVID, 85% to 90% are not vaccinated, Olivarez noted.
“So the vaccine is a primary concern for us and it’s an easy fix,” he said.
Olivarez also announced Thursday morning that 18 additional cases of the delta variant were confirmed in the county, of which 10 were within nursing home facilities.
The total count of confirmed delta cases is now up to 23 in the county, however, Melendez said only 23 were confirmed because there is not enough testing being conducted for variant cases.
“What is my personal belief of the delta variant and the other variants? They make up the vast majority,” Melendez said.
Officials reiterated their plea to the public to get vaccinated if they have already done so and to follow known safety measures.
As for the nursing shortage, Cortez said the county had been in communication with all hospitals to try to compile information in terms of the number of staff they had lost, compensation, and what options were available to them.
“All our hospitals have beds that are available to treat our sick people but there’s no nurses to fill those occupations, so we do have a capacity issue,” Cortez said. “I’m asking all the nurses in our area, all the nurses in our area, to step up, come back and serve our people in our area. It is time for you to come back and help us in this very critical place.”
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