Coronavirus Slams Again Houston Hospitals Like

Anxiety is setting in for Texas hospital officials every bit the number of coronavirus patients has surged in the terminal few days.

"Currently we accept room, but things have to modify. This is not good," said Dr. Faisal Masud, medical director of critical care medicine at the Houston Methodist hospital system. "The explosion of patients all across, that explosion has to slow down."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that "in that location is a massive outbreak of COVID-19 across the state of Texas," with over 5,551 coronavirus cases on Wednesday and more than than 4,000 hospital patients with COVID-19. The latest numbers put the state'due south new case full at more than 11,000 over ii days. The state is in its second week of record-breaking coronavirus hospitalizations.

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"I think we can manage right now, simply if this trajectory is what it was the last ten days," said Masud, "when nosotros literally had almost a tripling of our cases — nosotros can't do that for a couple of weeks at all."

Harris County, which includes Houston, has had the biggest leap and turned to a pediatric hospital to accept in transfer patients and gratis upward space for other hospitals.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner reported that the surface area's intensive care units are at 97 percent of their capacity.

In a argument Wednesday, the Texas Hospital Association said that hospitals are reserving fifteen percentage of bed capacity for COVID-19 patients and could slow or pause non-COVID-related procedures to increase capacity.

Merely they also warned in a statement that "if this trend continues, it is not sustainable."

'Tremendous stress' of balancing coronavirus, other patients

In San Antonio, Dr. Bryan Alsip, principal medical officer of Academy Wellness Arrangement, ane of the larger health systems in the city, said rapid increases in the number of COVID-19 inpatients are existence seen across all facilities, consistent with cases reported outside the infirmary in the city.

The facilities had returned to performing non-COVID procedures over the terminal half dozen weeks, Alsip said. Only as COVID-nineteen cases have risen, it'south put more pressure on the hospitals for chapters.

This week they're scaling back on elective surgical cases "but to make sure nosotros take sustainable capacity going frontward," Alsip said.

Alsip said hospitals are in the same position every bit businesses that had to shut downwardly earlier in the twelvemonth. As they've come up back they've tried to balance reopening with safe by limiting customers and asking them to maintain social distancing and wear masks.

"Hospitals are in the aforementioned position because procedures, many of these cases are acquirement sources and so it's not easy to shut that down again every bit we did previously," Aslip said.

Masud, who oversees eight hospitals in the Houston Methodist system, said facilities are under "tremendous stress" as they endeavor to deal with the jump in cases, while trying to treat patients who have been waiting for procedures they should have had three months ago.

"We owe information technology to the non-COVID patient also," he said. "To me a patient is a patient. If you have a person or a loved 1 who has a heart attack, am I not supposed to provide intendance to them?"

While capacity is frequently discussed in terms of beds, Masud said more COVID-xix patients mean more strain on personnel and equipment. The hospital system also is helping out county hospitals.

"In March and April, all of the constituent procedures got canceled so we could utilize a lot more teams focused on COVID and we really got information technology done great," he said. "The challenge is we have a whole set of other patients to accept care of. Information technology'southward non similar I tin can triple my chapters overnight because we have a lot of other patients."

Personnel was furloughed, now needed

Treating COVID-19 does not just involve finding an available bed, he said, noting that "you can have a bed in the Marriott." Providing care to pandemic patents requires nurses, therapies, critical care physicians and other people and equipment.

Calculation to the strain, some hospitals have furloughed personnel because of the terminate or slowdown of elective procedures, which generate revenue.

"A lot of the personnel that are needed at present are having to be hired dorsum or find more people — that means more of the PPE, we need more of that coming in," said Diana Fite, president of the Texas Medical Clan and an emergency care dr..

Even if the land tin can manage the latest fasten in cases, surges are hard on physician'southward offices and some smaller hospitals that work on thin profit margins, she said.

Abbott said Wednesday that some new restrictions at the local level may exist needed to protect infirmary space.

There are no statewide mandates on masks and other COVID-19 preventions, just Abbott is at present allowing local officials to mandate that businesses require customers to wear masks. Some Texas officials faced a harsh backlash when they tried to enforce penalties for non wearing masks.

Reaction to the surging coronavirus cases in Texas spilled onto social media Tuesday with #AbbottResign trending nationally for part of the twenty-four hour period.

The medical personnel interviewed Wednesday were eager to make public pleas for people to render to more cautious mindsets nigh coronavirus.

Fite said people should retrieve again about returning to using curbside pickup and staying inside.

"If we don't do something dissimilar today, we won't have a option," Masud said.

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Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/explosion-has-slow-down-texas-hospitals-edge-coronavirus-cases-surge-n1232053

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