Thread by @TexasTribune

1/ Texas has 2.9 hospital beds per 1,000 people.

Italy has 3.2 per 1,000.

South Korea has 12 per 1,000.

Texas hospitals don't have enough beds if too many people get sick at once.

#coronavirus #COVID19 #COVID_19

bit.ly/3d9NSHC

2/ This is why hospitals are urging Texans to stay as isolated as possible in order to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

Here's what is happening right now. bit.ly/3d9NSHC

#coronavirus #COVID19 #COVID_19

3/ Some hospitals are restricting who may visit.

Some are asking doctors and nurses to work longer hours.

Others are building drive-through testing sites, temporary triage centers and fever clinics in anticipation of high patient volumes. bit.ly/3d9NSHC

4/ We interviewed more than a dozen doctors, nurses and other health care workers about how ready the state’s health care system is for an expected spike in coronavirus cases.

This is what they told us. bit.ly/3d9NSHC

#coronavirus #COVID19 #COVID_19

5/ Some doctors are worried that they may run short on ventilators, machines that provide oxygen to patients who cannot breathe on their own.

Gov. Greg Abbott said he was confident that Texas hospitals have enough ventilators to handle the situation.

bit.ly/3d9NSHC

6/ Other health care workers expressed fears that supplies of personal protective equipment, such as N95 respirator masks, could quickly run out.

“Literally, [my boss] told me to hide them.”

bit.ly/3d9NSHC

#coronavirus #COVID19 #COVID_19

7/ One nurse at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston said the hospital had begun building a temporary structure in an ambulance bay to serve as a triage space.

bit.ly/3d9NSHC

#coronavirus #COVID19 #COVID_19

8/ Jacqueline, a nurse in Dallas, said her hospital was assigning some nurses to solely focus on coronavirus patients.

“In my years of experience in nursing that’s absolutely unheard of because we just don’t have the staff for that.”

bit.ly/3d9NSHC

9/9 Other nurses were being asked to prepare healthier patients to be discharged more quickly, she said, “because they don’t want them exposed to anything in the hospital and because we may need that bed.”

bit.ly/3d9NSHC