Coronavirus Patients from Mexico Crossing Border and Straining U.S. Hospitals
Has the time come to acknowledge it and consider remedies?
By Todd Bensman on December 4, 2020
AUSTIN, Texas – In late October, the El Paso television station KFOX-14 aired video of fire department ambulances lining up at the international bridge picking up Covid-19 patients who had just crossed from Mexico and driving them to hospitals, the ones now filled to crisis proportions.
Along with the video footage, the local TV station quoted one of the fire department's paramedics describing an assembly-line operation where the whole ambulance fleet at times was pressed into transporting Mexicans from the international ports of entry to El Paso hospitals. Projecting one of the nation's reddest Covid-19 hotspots, El Paso and its filled-beyond-capacity hospitals are now at the epicenter of national news coverage that rarely reflects testimony like this:
"There's some days where it's only three or four times and other days when it will be 13 or 14 responses. You'll be there for one patient and [CBP] customs will let you know, hey there's another one right behind them and another one. Sometimes there are four or five waiting in line," the fire department employee explained. "Multiple times in this pandemic we will be in a complete system overload where there are no ambulances available" because they were picking up patients at El Paso's international bridges.
https://cis.org/Bensman/Coronavirus-Patients-Mexico-Crossing-Border-and-Straining-US-Hospitals
