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Features 22 THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2020
‘We are no less
American’:
Deaths pile up
on Texas border
Paul J Weber
RIO GRANDE CITY, TEXAS (AP) —
When labour pains signalled that
Clarissa Muñoz was at last going to
be a mom, she jumped in a car and
headed two hours down the Texas
border into one of the nation’s most
dire coronavirus hot spots.
She went ‰irst to a hospital so
desperate for help that nurses re-
cently made 49 phone calls to ‰ind
a bed 700 miles away to airlift a dy-
ing man with the virus. From there,
she was taken to a bigger hospital
by ambulance. Along the way, she
passed a funeral home that typi-
cally handles 10 services a month
but is up to nine a week. And when
she ‰inally arrived to give birth, she
was blindsided by another compli-
cation: A test revealed that she too
was infected.
Hours later, Muñoz was granted
just a few seconds to lay eyes, but
no hands, on her ‰irst born, who
was quickly whisked away.
On America’s southern door-
step, the Rio Grande Valley, the
United States (US) failure to contain
the pandemic has been laid bare.
For nearly a month, this borderland
of two million people in South Texas
pleaded for a ‰ield hospital, but not
until Tuesday was one ready and
accepting patients. In July alone,
Hidalgo County reported more than
600 deaths — more than the Hous-
ton area, which is ‰ive times larger.
At DHR Health, one of the larg-
est hospitals on the border, nearly
200 of the 500 beds belong to
coronavirus patients isolated in two
units. A third unit is in the works.
That doesn’t even include the
COVID¡19 maternity ward, where
mothers and newborns are sepa-
rated immediately.
Doctors and nurses rushed Mu-
ñoz’s baby out of the delivery room
and down a hallway sealed by a zip-
pered tarp to restrict contaminated
air. Seven hours later, she still did
not know his weight. Across the
street, alarms blared constantly in
a coronavirus intensive-care unit,
summoning nurses to roll patients
onto their stomachs to force more
air into their lungs.
“It’s a really, really ugly feeling,”
Muñoz said of watching her son be-
ing taken away.
Texas reopened quicker than
most of the US, only to backtrack
in the face of massive outbreaks.
Health of‰icials said the worst of a
summer resurgence appears to be
behind the state as a whole, but the
border is a bleak exception. Doc-
tors fear another punishing wave is
around the corner.
This predominately Hispanic
region is cruelly vulnerable to
COVID¡19. The prevalence of diabe-
tes here is roughly three times the
national average, and households
have among the lowest incomes in
America, adding to the dif‰iculty of
thwarting the virus.
Even the weather has added to
burden. The ‰irst hurricane of the
season barreled over the border
two weeks ago. At ‰irst, local of‰i-
cials hoped that the storm named
Hanna would wash out family
gatherings, slowing the spread. In
reality, the system knocked out
power to thousands of homes for
days, driving families into closer
contact with relatives whose lights
remained on.
Now, said DHR Health’s Assis-
tant Chief Nursing Of‰icer Maritza
Padilla there’s “no chance” of ‰lat-
tening the region’s infection curve.
At the hospital, a television
monitor displays the struggle in
real time: Teal rectangles represent
occupied hospital beds, and green
rectangles are open beds. The grid
is nearly all teal. On a whiteboard,
“body bags” is scrawled on a list of
needed items.
A Christian relief charity that
opened a coronavirus ‰ield hospital
in New York’s Central Park visited
the border in mid-July with an eye
toward building another facility.
That never panned out, and neither
did another idea to send patients to
hotels. Last week, Republican Gov-
ernor Greg Abbott announced that
a Hidalgo County convention cen-
tre would become a hospital.
Local authorities remain frustrated.
“We need the help. Our house
is on ‰ire,” Rio Grande City Mayor
Joel Villarreal said. “We are no less
American than other people in oth-
er parts of the country.”
A nurse at Starr County Memo-
rial Hospital Martha Torres knows
about searching in vain for help.
She has spent entire shifts calling
other ICUs in Texas to accept heli-
copter transfers out of her 29-bed
unit. Some patients are sent as far
away as Oklahoma City, and few
survive after the long ‰light — leav-
ing families with the burden of get-
ting the bodies back home.
One entrance to the hospital’s
COVID¡19 ward resembles an off-
the-shelf patio door, the kind sold
at big-box hardware stores. Last
week, Alex Garcia, 26, visited his fa-
ther by peering through the outside
window of his room. Both men are
pipeline workers.
That same night, Emily Lopez
was preparing for her mother’s fu-
neral only weeks after her aunt died
of the virus. The two had been play-
ing bingo together before becom-
ing ill, and two other family mem-
bers were also hospitalised. “In this
area, it’s not a joke. It’s life or death,”
she said.
The COVID¡19 maternity ward
at DHR Health is a place of relative
calm but with its own problems.
Among them is the challenge of
squaring best practices with the
realities of South Texas, including
guidelines that recommend the
mother stay isolated at home and
the baby be placed in the hands of
another caregiver.
“This is great in Hartford, Con-
necticut, because everybody has a
4,000-square-foot home, the aver-
age income is USD180,000 and all
that. Down here, it’s very different,”
said Dr Efraim Vela, the hospital’s
chief executive physician of wom-
en’s health. “We’re having problems
with that.”
Nearly 15,000 pregnant women
in the US have tested positive for the
coronavirus, and at least 35 have
died, according to the Centers for
Disease Control (CDC). Although it
is possible for a pregnant woman to
spread the coronavirus to her fetus,
it seems to be relatively rare.
Muñoz, 25, didn’t know she had
the virus when she left her home in
the border town of Falcon last week
for her son’s birth. While she went
into labour alone, her husband sat
all night in the parking lot, barred
from coming inside.
First thing in the morning, he
plunked down USD100 for a rapid
COVID test at a clinic that told himhe
needed an appointment. “I told them
it was an emergency. They weren’t
going to let me get my son out of the
hospital unless I was negative,” said
her husband, Nicolas Garcia.
After the birth, her son was a
phone app away: The hospital lets
COVID-positive mothers call the
nursery over a video chat. Nurse
Ashley Vaughan makes a point to
position the camera so mothers can
see hands and toes on the call. “This
momwill stay on the video chat until
the mom falls asleep,” Vaughan said,
pointing to another bassinet.
She went back to the other
baby. “He’s doing good, right?”
Muñoz asked through the video.
Vaughan assured the new mother
that he was ‰ine, and the conver-
sation shifted to when the family
might go home.
“Are you done? Or do you want
to stay on?” Vaughan asked.
Muñoz said she would go for
now. She took a last look before
hanging up.
“I love you,” she said. “Bye.”
FROM LEFT: Nurse Amanda Vaughan takes photos and helps new mom Clarissa Munoz, who is infected with COVID19, see her baby via iPad at DHR Health; and a man with COVID19, wearing a
protective cover, is transferred from the emergency room to a COVID19 unit at Starr County Memorial Hospital in Rio Grande City, Texas on July 27
Equipment is hooked up as medical personnel watch over COVID19 patients at DHR Health in McAllen, Texas on
July 29. PHOTOS: AP