This Houston hospital is a perfect microcosm of the escalating coronavirus

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In June, the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston was so overwhelmed by the pandemic that two of its wings had been turned into Covid-19 departments.

Now there are three.

Chief medical officer Dr Joseph Varon had not had a day off since the virus struck months earlier.

He still doesn’t have it.

At the time, ICU nurse Tanna Ingraham was fighting the disease on her own, having contracted it from a patient, she believes.

She recovered, but got it back again. “It’s like hell and back,” she says of 2020.

From bad to worse, this hospital is a perfect microcosm of the escalation of the disease – even as vaccines are being rolled out across the country.

“The next six weeks will be the darkest in modern American medical history,” Varon says. “We are right during Christmas when people are not listening.”

Cases are exploding across Texas. The seven-day average of positive cases is at an all-time high – averaging over 16,000 new cases per day, according to Johns Hopkins University. This average is up 15% from last week.

Lone Star State is in shock

About 40% of Covid-19 patients in hospital come from other parts of the state reeling from the pandemic.

Walter Cuellar was transferred from West Texas, about 500 miles away. He believes he and his wife caught the virus at the supermarket. She had mild symptoms. Today he is on the mend, but when he arrived he almost put on a ventilator.

“Where I live there are a lot of people who don’t wear masks,” he says. “There have been many times that I go to the store with my wife and she and I were the only ones wearing a mask and the rest were not wearing a mask at all.”

Bri Smith works with international students and recently moved to Columbus, approximately 73 miles west of Houston. The wife and mother of three are also believed to have contracted the virus while shopping.

“It’s the worst I have ever felt in my life,” Smith says. “Aches and pains.”

Varon says patients are sicker now, after waiting longer for treatment.

“Our average patient spent about 20 days with symptoms before they came to us,” he says. Over the past few months, the hospital has used different means to treat the disease.

Richard Gonzales thought he could last it, so he resisted for a week in the hospital. He works two jobs, has a wife and five children, and does not know how he got the virus.

“I kinda messed up because these symptoms I had, when I had it I should have gone to the hospital or ER right away, but I didn’t. lay down in my bed thinking it would go away. “

‘It’s like we’ve been forgotten’

For Varon and the staff, the frustrations keep mounting.

“Even if I give them holy water, it will be difficult for them to improve,” says Varon.

Varon – who has been dubbed the “Covid hunter” and who has a license plate that says the same thing – was the first to receive the Moderna vaccine on Monday to assure staff and the largely minority community that the vaccine is on.

Dr John Okereke, director of emergency services, was also vaccinated. He is black and says it is essential for minorities to seek treatment and take the vaccine when available.

Okereke says doctors are “ecstatic” about the vaccinations.

“When you watch TV you don’t really know what doctors are going through,” he says. “You have no idea what we are going through. Sometimes we are really afraid of catching the disease.”

The vaccines couldn’t come at a better time. Hospitalizations continued to climb statewide, with 10,000 patients on Monday, according to the COVID Tracking Project – a level not seen since July.

Texas has registered 113,049 new cases of Covid-19 in the past seven days alone, according to Johns Hopkins. This is the second-highest state total, behind California.

Ingraham, the nurse, says she is stressed by the ongoing battle with the disease and has a message about the impact it has had on her and others in the hospital.

“It’s like we don’t exist,” she says. “You realize that we are always here to take care of those people who put my life in danger, the life of my child in danger, the life of my mother.

“I feel like we’ve been forgotten, literally.”