Health officials in Texas said they have asked the federal government for five mortuary trucks, as Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise in the state.
A fourth wave of infections in the US, driven by the Delta variant, has overwhelmingly hospitalized and killed the unvaccinated.
The Texas request comes at a complex stage of the pandemic, when about half of Americans are fully vaccinated, vaccine mandates are increasingly common and an official announcement about Covid booster shots is expected in days.
Texas officials said they requested the trucks from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or Fema, as a “precaution”, given rapid and widespread Covid-19 transmission.
“We haven’t gotten any local requests but we want to be ready with the Covid cases in the state,” Chris Van Deusen, a spokesperson for the Texas health department, told NBC News. “We didn’t want to wait.”
Covid-19 deaths in Texas have tripled in the last two weeks, growing to 89 a day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At the pandemic’s worst peak in the January, Covid-19 killed 351 people in Texas on average a day. More than 54,000 people in Texas have died of Covid-19.
Other health systems have also sounded the alarm. The University of Mississippi Medical Center said the Christian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse would set up a 30- to 50-bed field hospital in a parking garage, after a health official said the “failure of the hospital system in Mississippi” was imminent.
In August, one in five US hospitals have reached 95% capacity for intensive care, a level at which patient care suffers, according to the New York Times. Hospitals along the Gulf coast have struggled especially.
Even so, the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has been locked in a high-profile legal battle to block mask mandates. Federal officials have strongly recommended masks in public places, and especially in schools, to stop further spread of the Delta variant.
Abbott won a legal victory on Monday, when the entirely Republican state supreme court ruled in his favor on a temporary measure to block mask mandates. Two local cases are moving forward.
“Local mask mandates are illegal under GA-38,” the office of the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, tweeted after the ruling was released. “Let this ruling serve as a reminder to all [independent school districts] and local officials that the governor’s order stands.”
Elected officials in northern Texas have issued dire warnings about the spread of Covid-19 among children. On Friday, Dallas county judge Clay Jenkins said there were “zero” available intensive care unit beds for children in his area. Children are believed to have less severe symptoms from Covid-19 than adults, but widespread transmission means more children are likely be infected.
“Texas schools are already canceling classes due to Covid outbreaks among students and staff,” said the Democratic former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke on Twitter. He urged parents to “call your school board” and ask them to require masks and “do the right thing”.
Dr Nancy Glass, a palliative care doctor in Houston, said 35 children were hospitalized with Covid as of Tuesday.
“The numbers have never been this high,” she said on Twitter.
Covid cases have increased nationally since a low point in June, according to the CDC. On average this week, about 108,000 people a day have been found to have Covid, compared to about twice as many in January.
