COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. have now risen back up to the April 15 peak level of 59,538, according to the Covid Tracking Project. Florida has over 8,500 of the nation’s hospitalizations, with 53 hospitals in 27 counties having run out of ICU beds for COVID-19 patients. The Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration shows a 37% increase in COVID hospitalizations since July 10, when the state began providing daily hospital counts. While adult ICU-beds usage is at 84% capacity statewide, some areas exceed capacity — such as Miami-Dade, now at 130%. The coronavirus simply does not respect where the hospital beds are — and simple averages often conceal the real process underway, which includes the especially devastating impact the pandemic is having in impoverished areas.
Texas, another one of the national hotspots, has 10,848 COVID hospitalizations, according to the Covid Tracking Project. Most of the state has handled the hospitalizations, in part by cutting back on elective procedures and creating new spaces beyond the previous “staffed capacity” level. Presently, Houston and Dallas, for example, have excess capacity. However, the major concern is southern Texas, including San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, where poverty is a major problem. The San Antonio hospital system hit about 1,200 COVID hospitalizations two weeks ago, and has remained at that level. That is about 90% of “staffed bed” capacity. Over one-third of the patients are in the ICU beds, and over two-thirds of those ICU patients are on ventilators. San Antonio is running a 23% test-positivity rate. Twelve new deaths on July 21 brought the total for the first three weeks of July to 152, more than the pre-July total of 122. Finally, more than 50% of the new cases are all in the 20-29 age range, and a full 10% are actually pediatric cases.
Five of the Texas counties abutting the Rio Grande — Cameron, Hidalgo, Maverick, Webb, and Val Verde — have more than doubled their cases in the last two weeks. All five exceeded their ICU bed capacity between July 3 and July 15. In southern Texas, Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez said: “Unfortunately, our hospital rooms look like war zones … in the last eight days, we have an average of 22 people die per day.… We brought in a lot of refrigerated trailers to access more morgues.…”
This Rio Grande Valley was the subject of an EIR study in 1991, showing what NAFTA would do to perpetuate poverty — and that is now making the pandemic that much harder to deal with. See “Poverty and free trade
in the Rio Grande Valley” (EIR, May 17, 1991)
— and compare it with what EIR’s NAWAPA program would have accomplished in the same area. https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1991/eirv18n19-19910517/eirv18n19-19910517_020-poverty_and_free_trade_in_the_ri.pdf
