With a surge of coronavirus patients straining hospitals in El Paso, the Department of Defense on Friday sent three military medical teams to the Texas border city to assist with the care of patients.
Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that he welcomed the deployment of the teams — each made up of approximately 20 Air Force personnel — and said they would be “crucial to our efforts in reducing Covid-19 hospitalizations in El Paso.”
While most other areas of Texas have seen a slower rise in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, the state on Friday became the first to record more than 1 million coronavirus cases over the course of the pandemic, according to a New York Times database.
El Paso has been experiencing a rapid spread of the virus, reporting an average of more than 1,900 new cases a day. As of Friday, more than 1,000 people were hospitalized in the city and surrounding county of 700,000, and 18 new deaths were reported. More than 650 people have died since the start of the pandemic.
The number of hospitalizations has been sharply increasing since early October, as it has throughout the hard-hit areas of the central United States. The surge had already prompted the Texas Division of Emergency Management to create temporary medical facilities, including one at the El Paso Convention and Performing Arts center.
Federal military medical teams, which include doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists, have been deployed around the country to address urgent needs for medical staffing during the pandemic. Such teams were sent to cities in Texas in July, when Houston and Dallas saw huge surges in cases.
The teams were set to deploy to El Paso on Friday, a spokesman for the state emergency management division said, and would begin assisting doctors and nurses at three hospitals in the city over the weekend: the University Medical Center of El Paso, the Hospitals of Providence Transmountain Campus and the Las Palmas Del Sol Medical Center.
Also Friday, a state court in El Paso denied an effort by the Texas attorney general and local restaurateurs to undo a lockdown imposed by El Paso County officials last week.
Lawyers for the attorney general, Ken Paxton, and the restaurant owners argued that the lockdown by the top executive in El Paso County, Ricardo A. Samaniego, violated an earlier statewide executive order by Gov. Greg Abbott, which prevented local governments from pursuing pandemic restrictions that were more stringent than those set by the state.
Mr. Samaniego’s order includes a 10 p.m. curfew as well as prohibitions on indoor-dining, all but essential travel and gatherings of any size outside of a household.
Restaurant owners have been particularly hurt in the pandemic, and a small group brought the initial case seeking an injunction. But the legal wrangling quickly grew into a clash between the county and the state when Mr. Paxton intervened. “Judge Samaniego’s unlawful order blatantly violates Gov. Abbott’s executive order,” Mr. Paxton said in a statement on Friday. “This oppression of the El Paso community must end.”
Such a legal conflict between state and county officials over emergency powers had not been adjudicated before, said the judge in the case, William E. Moody. But while there was no legal precedent, the judge said on Friday, there was historical precedent.
— J. David Goodman The New York Times