'Like a Horror Movie': A Small Border Hospital Battles the Coronavirus

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas — A tense rescue scene has been unfolding for weeks outside a small rural hospital on the Mexican border that has been the first line of defense against one of the most voracious coronavirus outbreaks in the country.

On an average day before the outbreak, a handful of doctors and nurses treated patients at the hospital for “infections, pneumonia, heart conditions, and roughly, that’s it,” said Joseph Panlilio, one of the hospital’s head nurses. Facing an overwhelming number of cases, the hospital said in July that it would convene an ethics committee to help make difficult decisions about which patients to treat, which to medevac to better-equipped hospitals and which to send home to die.

As cases climbed in Starr County and the hospital struggled, it began transporting a handful of its most severe cases by helicopter and ambulance to bigger hospitals in Lubbock, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and even across the state line in Oklahoma. Roger Garcia, 38, said his mother, Martha Ramos de Garcia, 65, had contracted the virus in late July while she was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer.

But when the state reopened its economy in May, the virus began spreading rapidly through nearby Hidalgo and Cameron counties, fueled by poverty and chronic disease. Large family outbreaks occurred as soon as people were allowed to leave their homes freely, health officials said.“We’re in a crisis,” said Roel Ruiz, 57, a construction worker who was strolling along the river last week wearing an N95 face mask in the sweltering heat.“I’m not sick,” Ruiz said. “Neither is my family.

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