W. Texas towns are overrun by tourists, virus
For Andrew Rubalcaba’s 39th birthday, he wanted to get out of town — but he also wanted to be safe.
So before Thanksgiving, he drove more than 500 miles west from his home in McKinney to visit Marfa and Big Bend National Park.
The popular Texas tourist destinations were appealing in the midst of a still-raging pandemic because they are seemingly in the middle of nowhere. They’re rural, sparsely populated, outdoorsy — and now, they’re overrun with visitors and saturated with COVID-19 cases.
“If onlywe knewthe locals were saying don’t come, definitely we would not have gone. We would not have gone out of respect for the local population,” Rubalcaba said.
Presidio and Brewster counties, home to Marfa and Big Bend, along with nearby Culberson County, lead the state in cases per 1,000 residents in the last two weeks, a Texas Tribune analysis shows. And all of West Texas is ablaze with increasing COVID-19 cases and low on hospital beds.
Big Bend Regional Medical Center, in Brewster County, has just 25 acute care beds. Culberson County’s 2,200 residents have just Culberson Hospital, where there are 14 beds and two ventilators, and at least one doctor said she doesn’t feel adequately prepared to use them.
Patients in dire condition are often transferred from the small towns to regional hospitals in larger metropolitan areas. But those closest hospital systems in El Paso, Lubbock and Midland, which have more resources, already are struggling with their own influxes of local cases, leaving doctors and county officials worried a bump in cases from Thanksgiving gatherings will fill beds beyond capacity, with nowhere left to send the sickest patients.
“It’s unlikely we’d be able to help them at this point,” said Ricardo Samaniego, the county judge of El Paso, where COVID-19 patients occupy more than 35 percent of hospital beds.
Doctors scrambling
Without El Paso as an option to send patients, nearby doctors and officials are scrambling.
“It’s a scary feeling tohave a critically ill patient with nowhere to go,” said Gilda Morales, a Culberson County commissioner and doctor at Culberson Hospital.
She said that in recent weeks, the county has sent struggling patients to hospitals in San Antonio— more than 400 miles away.
If a flood of residents need to be hospitalized quickly, and cases in San Antonio and other metropolitan areas swell, Culberson might not have the resources to treat everyone in need, Morales said.
“We’re worried those beds will run out, and then what?” Morales said.
Hospitals across the West Texas region are “bumping capacity and stretched absolutely to the limit,” said John Henderson, president of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals. Administrators have struggled to find open beds, in some cases calling15 or 20 facilities, he said.
In Midland and neighboring Odessa, the area’s three hospitals serve as “referral centers,” accepting patients from small-town facilities that are ill equipped to treat serious illnesses.
“All of our outlying facilities, they don’t have ICUs or ventilators that can take care of patients long term,” said Dr. Rohith Saravanan, chief medical officer of Odessa Regional Medical Center. The hospital in recent weeks added 34 beds for people with COVID-19.
Scenic Mountain Medical Center in Big Spring is one of those out lying community hospitals. The seven intensive care unit beds are full, as are 18 overflow beds that fill the hallways.
Tourist worries
Before Thanksgiving, cases and hospitalizations were already on the rise in the mostly rural region, and locals worried that tourism and family gatherings would only make the hot spot worse.
Yet even as cases of the coronavirus have ballooned, tourists from other parts of the state have continued to flock to the region’s campsites and small communities. In the tiny desert city and artistic hub of Marfa, tourism never slowed. People still flood the town’s hotels and shops. It’s a delicate situation for the town of 1,700, which has an economy that relies on tourism but has seen an explosion of COVID-19.
“Our community is fragile,” City Council member Raúl Lara said. He buys groceries on Fridays after work and rarely leaves his house during weekends to avoid crowds.
“It’s a double-edged sword because we live on tourism money and we die without it,” Lara said.
Recently, Jeanine Bishop, who runs the Alpine Humane Society and a thrift shop, laid off all her staff. As cases rise, she worries about unmasked customers entering her store.
“It’s hard. We need the tourist dollars, but we’re really scared of what’s going to happen because of Thanksgiving,” Bishop said.
“Our community is fragile. It’s a double-edged sword because we live on tourism money and we die without it.” Raúl Lara, Marfa City Council member
Feeling powerless
Despite shutdowns this spring when COVID-19 was not widespread in her area, neither the state government nor Bishop’s local officials have urged stricter precautions this time around.
She feels powerless to stop what feels like an inevitable and sharp increase in cases as she watches more Texans vacation in the region while her community suffers the consequences.
She said that on a recent weekend, most customers at her store said they were from out of town. Bishop offered them a message: “Please don’t. We’re going to be devastated in two weeks.”