Texas prepares tents to deal with Covid surge

State’s governor has asked hospitals to forgo elective procedures due to the surge of coronavirus cases

A hospital system in Texas is going to use tents to house the overwhelming number of patients seeking treatment amid the latest coronavirus spike.

At the Harris Health System in Houston, one in four patients at its two hospitals has tested positive for Covid-19, according to CNN.

ICU space at both Ben Taub Hospital and Lyndon B Johnson Hospital is nearly at combined capacity – 95 per cent of beds are taken at Ben Taub, and there is no room left at LBJ.

Coronavirus patients represent 27 per cent of the total ICU load at Ben Taub, and 63 per cent at LBJ. Because of the complete lack of space at LBJ, the overflow tents will be erected at that location.

Bryan McLeod told CNN that the tents were still being set up and would be used once the hospital deemed it necessary.

“They are still in the process of completing set up, and installing IT equipment, etc. There is no pre-determined time for when they will begin to be used, but they want the tented environment to be ready to go in the event they are needed,” Mr McLeod said.

According to the hospital's CEO, Esmaeil Porsa, the hospitals are treating 122 Covid-19 patients, and if current trends hold, more will be on the way.

“What is intriguing about this surge is not so much the magnitude of the numbers, but the speed at which the numbers are going up,” the CEO said. “It took us five weeks to get from one [patient] to 120. When I look at the last surge, it took us three months – the rapid rise in the amount of Covid patients is very concerning.”

The spike in patients has exacerbated ongoing healthcare staffing issues across the country. Many nurses and other healthcare workers left the field in the later months of the pandemic, and others have fallen ill due to the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus.

Harris Health System told CNN that it was 254 nurses short of its staffing needs, forcing it to fill those spots with expensive agency staff.

Hospitals in the Houston area were so overwhelmed by the Delta variant that some patients had to be transferred out of the city for treatment.

On Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the state was recruiting out-of-state healthcare professionals to help manage the growing caseload of Covid-19 patients.

Mr Abbott also has asked hospitals to voluntarily postpone elective medical procedures until further notice.

The governor also authorised the opening of additional Covid-19 antibody infusion centres and the expansion of vaccine availability in rural parts of the state.

Despite the surge in patients and lack of healthcare workers, Mr Abbott has refused to budge on other culture-war adjacent. He has not lifted his emergency order banning county and local governments from mandating masks.

According to the hospital's CEO, all 128 people who have died from coronavirus at the two hospitals have been unvaccinated people.