COVID-19 overwhelmed Nueces County hospitals last year and in to the winter. Now it's back, perhaps worse than before. Their health care system is being overrun with Covid-19 patients. There were 359 cases Tuesday and 212 Monday.
County judge Barbara Canales says "we were so low a month ago, it didn't feel like it existed. We cannot believe in one month's time we've seen this kind of dramatic increase."
And the problem now isn't a matter of enough bed space, beds can always be added. Rather this is a due to a lack of health care professionals. She says the first thing that's going to be stressed is hospital staff.
"Last year we did not have the issues that we see now, which is a workforce that's been diminished for a multitude of reasons. Not only are we going through a surge, but we're going through a surge with a lot less workforce than we had last year as our baseline."
And that's why she issued an emergency call Monday night for nurses who aren't working, perhaps retired, to dust of their scrubs and return. 30 are returning as of Tuesday night. Canales says they set up a volunteer organization within their mass vaccination clinics and asked what kind of work would people like to do. "This is a very smart way of galvanizing a workforce quickly and make sure you can properly place people."
Canales is thrilled with the early response. "The hospital that was really over capacity needed 40 nurses. We're almost there." Now they plan to call for doctors.
She says she knows this is making a difference. "I went to eat lunch at my favorite place and the server came to me and said 'I just want to thank you. I lost my cousin seven days ago, and what you've done by calling on these nurses is going to make a difference. I wish he had been vaccinated but at least we can help those who are in the hospital now.'"
She says vaccination rates in the county are lower than they'd like but there has been an uptick in the wake of the Delta variant. But there are those who will never waver and will never get it. She says she's playing defense and has sent a letter to the state, asking them to send critical staffing set up a rapid infusion center to administer the therapeutic monoclonal antibody regeneron. "If we can do this, we can help decompress our emergency department and leave the space for those other illnesses that we know happen every day. This is the danger, to not have space for other illnesses."
