Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez announced Wednesday that hospitals in the Rio Grande Valley are out of ICU beds due to COVID-19, forcing staff to hold patients in the emergency room until rooms become available or until they are able to create additional capacity.
“We have seen a COVID surge among those who are unvaccinated, as well as a small percentage of breakthrough cases for those who are fully vaccinated. Stay safe out there,” he wrote on social media.
Mendez said in an interview with The Brownsville Herald that he is in communication with chief executive officers from the local hospitals on a daily basis and is part of Zoom calls once a week where other emergency management personnel are included where they discuss the situation and plan for the necessary response.
According to the numbers Mendez received, the ICU beds availability has been in decline since the beginning of August.
“I was not surprised because it has been clear for the past couple of weeks that the unvaccinated were driving a COVID surge similar to what we saw last summer,” Mendez said.
“That does not mean that those who are vaccinated are immune. We have also seen a small percentage of fully vaccinated individuals who have been infected.”
Mendez said he is thankful that a large portion of the community has been vaccinated but is still concerned that the delta variant is the dominant strain.
“It is highly contagious and appears to be affecting a younger segment of our population much more than the COVID strain we saw in 2020,” he said.
“Almost 70 percent of our community suffers from some type of chronic illness or comorbidity that increases the risk for serious illness or death from COVID.”
Some community members blame the current COVID-19 wave to the asylum seekers who have been arriving in border cities since the beginning of this year.
According to official numbers, the asylum seekers arriving in Brownsville have a 10.60% positivity rate for COVID-19 while Cameron County has 22.6% and Hidalgo County 30.5%. The state of Texas currently has an 18.7% positivity rate, official numbers show.
“The City of Brownsville, through federal assistance from FEMA, has contracted American Medical Response (AMR) to administer COVID-19 testing to migrants coming into the country,” officials said.
“This process started from the beginning of the migrant flow, which was on January 27, 2021. From this date, the positivity rate for COVID-19 amongst migrants has been 10.60%.”
Cameron County Health Authority Dr. James Castillo, said even though some hospitals have doubled the number of ICU beds that they normally have, there are still not enough ICU beds to meet the demand. He said this time the issue is the lack of staff rather than the lack of space at the hospitals.
“It’s more of a staffing issue than a physical space issue. In the summer of last year, there was over 1,300. Almost double the number that we have right now of COVID patients. But the difference then, was that we had all this outside help,” he said. “We had the military here, we had traveling nurses and this time, there are so many places experiencing this, it’s that there’s not enough help to go around.”
He said there is a lack of nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, phlebotomists, ambulance transportation and everything that is needed to give patients in ICU beds the care they need. He said everybody is working extra at the hospitals, which are over capacity, and as new people get sick they have to wait in the emergency room hoping an ICU bed becomes available.
“An ICU bed, what is it that makes it special? Is that it has a trained nurse — who specializes in medical care — with a medical care doctor and the respiratory therapist to deal with the breathing machine, and the staff to be able to take care of such a sick patient. So, it is a whole team and if you only have one, then you don’t have any,” he said.
“… As new people get sick and show up to the emergency room needing an ICU bed, they have to wait. Either for somebody to get better, or somebody to die. Or, for a new bed to be made, for new staff, to get more help. That’s a dynamic thing. It can change from the morning to the evening.”
Castillo emphasized that while vaccinated patients can get infected with COVID, the vast majority who are at the hospitals in need of an ICU bed are those who are unvaccinated. He said the staff in the hospitals are working harder than ever to provide the care patients need but there’s only so much they can do.
He said if anybody is undecided about the vaccine and has been waiting for the right time to get it, this is it because COVID-19 has gotten a lot more contagious and more people who normally don’t get as sick are ending up in ICU beds. He said getting the vaccine will help reduce the chances of ending up in the hospital due to COVID-19 so that other patients who need care can get it.
“If anybody is undecided about the vaccine, if they’ve been waiting to make sure they really need it: now is the time to make that decision. And, for the people that have decided that they are not going to get the vaccine, I would urge them to please talk with their doctor, or to call the Health Department about getting monoclonal antibodies. Which is a treatment to help reduce the risk of ending up in the hospital, so that we can help the hospitals out by people not getting sick and needing them in the first place,” he said.
“At least when it comes to COVID, so that they can continue to take care of all the other things that they normally take care of. The hospitals have stopped doing elective procedures. They need to make space for COVID patients. How long can those patients put off their needed surgeries? We are not talking cosmetic surgeries, we are talking about taking out tumors and heart surgeries, bowel replacements. There is no space for that and that can only go on so long.”
