AUSTIN (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — This week greater than 7,400 Texans are hospitalized for COVID-19, with some cities impacted excess of others. In El Paso the overwhelming surge in instances has town sending sufferers who don’t have the coronavirus to hospitals elsewhere within the state.
El Paso confirmed 994 new COVID-19 instances and 13 new deaths Tuesday, and Austin Mayor Steve Adler confirmed that hospitals within the space are receiving non-coronavirus sufferers from overwhelmed hospitals within the border metropolis.
In a Fb Stay replace on Monday evening, Adler mentioned that El Paso was in a “world of damage” and that numbers in Dallas, San Antonio and Houston had been “scarier than ours, and our numbers are scary sufficient by themselves.”
El Paso’s well being care techniques grew to become overwhelmed even after the state despatched extra medical assets, Adler mentioned. He added that he was involved that if Dallas, Houston and San Antonio hospitals additionally required assist, Austin’s assets would have little to no capability to deal with its personal instances if its COVID-19 numbers reached an analogous stage.
“Now we have sufferers in our hospitals proper now that don’t have the virus however wanted hospitalizations, and they’re right here from El Paso as a result of there was no room,” Adler mentioned.
State well being officers reported 7,841 COVID-19 sufferers had been hospitalized on Tuesday, 373 greater than on Monday, probably the most since early August and about double the hospitalizations of a month in the past.
Officers in Harris County, the place Houston is positioned, appealed to the general public to forego gatherings with anybody past their very own rapid households through the vacation season in an effort to assist cease the unfold of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
On Tuesday afternoon, Harris County despatched out an emergency textual content alert to all four.7 million of its residents asking them to cancel their vacation gatherings and to get examined.
“This isn’t the yr… to have an important vacation gathering, an important outing on the bar, restaurant. It’s simply not the time,” mentioned Harris County Decide Lina Hidalgo, the county’s high elected official.
Statewide, 7,165 new coronavirus instances Tuesday raised to 1,066,918 the quantity reported for the reason that pandemic first struck Texas in early March, in accordance with statistics compiled by Johns Hopkins College. Thirty-seven new COVID-19 deaths additionally had been reported because the outbreak nears the mid-July peak.
At a information convention, Hidalgo warned that the variety of COVID-19 instances and associated hospitalizations regionally is growing. She mentioned she feared the developments resembled what the realm noticed proper earlier than June and July when the county noticed a big spike in instances that crammed up hospitals.
Hidalgo mentioned that since late September, the variety of common new day by day instances in Harris County has elevated by 250%. On this similar time interval, the positivity charge has elevated by 30% and is now at eight.2%.
Hidalgo, who has been crucial of the state’s dealing with of the pandemic and its limits on native jurisdictions’ means to implement guidelines through the disaster, mentioned residents needs to be asking extra of all ranges of presidency.
“That’s why we’d like the state to step in and lead or get out of the way in which and allow us to lead,” she mentioned.
“I’m involved by what’s occurring in El Paso and seeing that they’ve received no recourse, that they’re having to tug up these cell morgues, that hospitals are overwhelmed, tales of tragedy,” Hidalgo mentioned. “I don’t need that to occur right here and that’s why we’re having this dialog to try to keep away from that destiny.”
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Related Press contributed to this report.)
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