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COVID-19 Surge Hits Las Cruces And El Paso Hospitals Hard

Memorial Medical Center, Las Cruces

The New Mexico Department of Health announced 338 new COVID-19 cases in Doña Ana County on Tuesday. Those cases are part of the more than 2,100 reported statewide, a new daily record.

Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces is working to keep up with the recent increase of COVID-19 cases. According to Chief Medical Officer Dolores Gomez, the hospital could reach capacity in the next few weeks if current trends continue.

“If we stay on our trajectory as of where we are, we could be looking at hitting a point where we have to worry about capacity issues within the next one to three weeks, but it's hard to say, and it's all going to depend on how sick somebody gets,” Gomez said. “We're continuing to see the number of positive cases continue to go up…you know when you see those numbers go up, you know that some of those people are going to be at our doorstep here at the hospital.” 

Gomez is part of a team made up of hospital nurses, the engineering department and other staff that monitor the COVID situation on a daily basis. She says that care will continue, even if the facility reaches full capacity.

“You're not going to stop caring for patients. You know, if you're working in the hallways, or you're working in areas that aren't normally patient care areas, we're going to build that capacity,” Gomez said. “Maybe it's just done in a different facility with maybe not as severe a sickness in those patients as well. So we're working with our community, working with our city and our county, to look at that, as well. We don't ever want to say we can't give you care.”

Credit Dr. Dolores Gomez / Memorial Medical Center
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Memorial Medical Center

As part of the hospital’s emergency preparedness plan, Memorial Medical Center currently has a mobile morgue to compensate for lack of space inside the hospital.

“Unfortunately, the part that we have to prepare is having that ability to have a place for them if they pass away until they can get to their final resting place,” Gomez said. “And so the morgue that's been brought in for MMC is one. Mountain View also has two available. If it needs to go to more than that, then that's what we have to do, but at this point, that's kind of where we're sitting right now in our emergency preparedness plan.”

In nearby El Paso, where hospitals are already reaching capacity, one traveling nurse took to Facebook Live to describe her experience working at the University Medical Center of El Paso. Lawanna Rivers recounted her experience working with the sickest patients in the hospital.

“I was put in what’s call a pit and in this pit was eight patients, all COVID positive,” Rivers said. “On my first day of orientation I was told that whatever patients go into the pit, they only come out in a body bag.” 

Texas accounts for more than one million of the total number of cases in the United States, which now sits at over 11 million.

Here in Las Cruces, Gomez says Memorial Medical Center is working to make sure their emergency preparedness plan covers a multitude of different scenarios. 

“I think just definitely being prepared and being ready for the possibility,” Gomez said. “I think you always want to look for that worst case scenario, and then you hope that you don't get there. But you want to be prepared for that as much as possible.”

Gomez emphasized that the best way the public can help is to follow the governor’s shelter in place order, wear masks and practice social distancing.

“This is a public health issue, it is not anything more than that,” Gomez said. “It's real. It's scary. It’s hard for us to have to make these sacrifices that we're making to not be with those that we love or not be able to celebrate some party or wedding, or whatever it is. But it's the way that we're going to get through this. And until we really look at that and say this is what we need to do, when we do that, we'll be able to get back where we need to be. But we need everybody to be on board right now more than ever, just because of what we're seeing in the numbers."

Madison Staten was a Multimedia Reporter for KRWG Public Media from 2020-2022.