HIDALGO COUNTY THE EPICENTER OF RGV BATTLE WITH COVID

A team of nurses surrounding a coronavirus patient moments after her death.

(In the Rio Grande Valley, on Texas’ southern border, more than a third of families live in poverty. Nearly half of the residents have no health insurance, and obesity and heart disease are widespread.

Now coronavirus cases there are surging, threatening to overwhelm hospitals and create a public-health disaster. “Our curve is a straight up trajectory right now,” one hospital official said. “There’s no relief.”)

By Caitlin Dickerson

Photos by Lynsey Addario

New York Times

EDINBURG, Texas — On a sweltering day last week near the southern tip of Texas, where high rates of poverty and chronic illness have heightened the ferocity of the coronavirus, Dr. Renzo Arauco Brown made his rounds, checking on patients who were facing severe complications from the virus and barely hanging on to life.

The now-chaotic special infectious disease unit where he works has been clobbered with new admissions in recent weeks. Clinicians sweat under layers of protective gear and yell over constantly blaring alarms.

Standing over a 63-year-old man whose lungs were taking in dangerous amounts of oxygen from a ventilator, Dr. Brown ordered medication to paralyze the man in hopes it would fix the problem. But it was one of many. The man had also suffered a severe stroke and blood clots because of the virus.

The serious infectious disease unit at the DHR Health in Edinburg, Texas, this month. “We knew that if the hospital was hit, it was going to be a disaster,” Dr. Adolfo Kaplan said.

Down the hall, a nurse pulled a cushion out from under the head of a 39-year-old woman and found it covered with blood. Dr. Brown rushed over. He turned to the nurse, who was already on the phone ordering supplies for a transfusion. “Tell them to bring it, like, now,” he said.

As the coronavirus expands its destructive path across the United States, it is bearing down on some of the places most vulnerable to its devastation — places like the southernmost wedge of Texas, on the border with Mexico, which has seen a punishing surge in infections.

In the Rio Grande Valley, more than a third of families live in poverty. Up to half of residents have no health insurance, including at least 100,00 undocumented people, who often rely on under-resourced community clinics or emergency rooms for care.

Tick off the list of risk factors for developing severe complications from the virus and you will have described this margin of the country: More than 60 percent of residents are diabetic or prediabetic. The rates of obesity and heart disease are among the nation’s highest. More than 90 percent of the population is Latino, a group that is dying from the virus at higher rates than white Americans are.

To read rest of story, click on link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/us/coronavirus-texas-rio-grande-valley.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200720&instance_id=20454&nl=the-morning&regi_id=118696256&segment_id=33842&te=1&user_id=e686a99f0675424fa8b39ab931759509

A photo essay accompanies our story from the region.