An increase in coronavirus cases in rural Texas has forced a hospital to establish “death panels” to decide which patients it can save and which will be sent home to die.
Doctors at Starr County Memorial Hospital, the only hospital in Starr County, have received critical care guidelines to decide which Covid-19 patients to treat and which will be sent home because they are likely to die. The committee is being formed to ease the hospital’s limited medical resources so that doctors can target patients with higher survival rates.
Starr County began experiencing increases in coronavirus cases in early July, with 1,769 confirmed cases reported as of July 24, 17 confirmed deaths, and 33 deaths pending confirmation from the state. The county had spent several weeks in the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic without reporting any cases. Starr County, along the border between the United States and Mexico, has a population of about 64,000 people.
Officials blamed social gatherings for the increase in cases.
“We are looking at the results of socialization during July 4, vacations and other social opportunities,” Starr County Judge Elroy Vera wrote on the county’s Facebook page. “Unfortunately, Starr County Memorial Hospital has limited resources, and our physicians will have to decide who receives treatment and who is sent home to die for loved ones.”
The county issued a shelter order in place on July 24 and enacted curfews and mandatory facial coverages. The first 2020 hurricane to make landfall in the U.S., Category One Hurricane Hanna, traveled through Starr County over the weekend, forcing some traffic test centers to temporarily close.
“I have been a nurse for almost 30 years and have never seen a time like this in our community,” said Corando Ríos, a nurse in the Covid-19 unit at Starr County Memorial Hospital. She tested positive for coronavirus a few days ago and is recovering at home in quarantine.
“We are not ICU [intensive care unit] able, but we are doing work in the ICU. We now have a statewide emergency response team of nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, and nursing assistants, and last week two doctors, nurses, and respiratory therapists came from the US Navy, “added Rios. “We are doing the best we can with the available resources.”
Critics of the Trump administration have referred to the guidelines as “death panels.” The phrase was first popularized by Republican critics of Barack Obama’s health reforms when they falsely claimed that “death panels” would be used to decide who received critical treatment.
Starr County is not the first place to be forced to develop guidelines for the Covid 19 patients it will treat. Critical care standards were first enacted in the US in Arizona on July 3 in response to requests from health care providers across the state. In early July, Arizona became a global hot spot for coronavirus, although positive case rates have declined since then.
“The state has activated the standards, but I don’t think hospitals are using them at the moment,” said Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association. Currently, hospitals transfer coronavirus patients to different facilities to avoid capacity problems. “That may change this drop as demand for non-greedy hospitalization begins to rise.”
