Record growth in colonovirus cases is pushing toward hospital numbers in the border cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, facing health officials in Texas and Mexico in a tightly knitted metropolitan area of one million people.
Health officials are blaming the spike on family gatherings, young people living in multiple generations of the same household and young people going shopping or doing business.
The crisis – part of a fatal relapse by the virus across almost the US – has created an extremely frightening hotspot in North America and stressed how the two cities are connected economically, geographically and culturally, with many people leaving regularly. Forward and cross the border for shopping and visiting with family.
In El Paso, authorities have instructed residents to stay home for two weeks and imposed a curfew at 10 a.m., and they are arranging dozens of hospital beds in the convention center.
Also, the University Medical Center of El Paso set up warm separate tents for the treatment of coronavirus patients. As of Tuesday, Ryan Milke, director of public affairs, said the hospital had 195 Kovid-19 patients, down from three dozen a month earlier, and that “it is growing day by day.”
In Juarez, the Mexican government is sending mobile hospitals, ventilators and doctors, nurses and respiratory specialists. A hospital is being built inside the local university arena to help with the overflow.
Juarez has noted more than 12,000 infections and more than 1,100 deaths, but the actual number is thought to be much higher, as COVID-19 testing is extremely limited. About 1,400 new cases were reported Tuesday in El Paso County, slightly short of the previous day’s record of 1,443. In the county, 853 patients were hospitalized Monday for the virus, up from 786 a day earlier.
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