Texas National Guard to Help Pandemic-Ravaged El Paso with Overflowing Morgues
Texas National Guard troops were deployed to El Paso, Texas to help with overflowing morgues as the town was ravaged by a COVID-19 surge.
According to the Texas Division of Emergency Management, they assessed the situation on the ground at El Paso during the past week.
The state then decided to mobilize a team from the Texas National Guard to "provide mortuary affairs support," reported CBS 4, an El Paso affiliate to CBS News.
When asked what the Texas National Guard troops can do to help, El Paso County Commissioner David Stout said: "They are going to be helping out with taking care of the decadent's and making sure we have enough space."
The troops will also be "making sure that we are able to move things around and just be as respectful as possibly can when it comes to treating these folks who have passed away due to COVID."
Stout said the plan is for the troops to help at the Medical Examiner's office while a secondary morgue is built, reported NBC affiliate KTSM.
He said he's not sure where the secondary site may be but said it will function as an "overflow space."
"[I]t's basically going to be a building that we are going to be able to refrigerate and keep at a cooler temperature as opposed to bringing in more of these mobile morgues," Stout added.
City mayor Dee Margo tweeted on Friday that as cases and hospitalizations spiked in El Paso, so did the deaths.
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He added that the Texas Military will be providing El Paso with the "critical personnel" to help in managing the deaths in the city.
El Paso Needs More Help
The county is still looking for more people to help in morgue operations, the commissioner said.
Due to the pandemic, more than 300 people are in intensive care units across El Paso.
To help with the surge, the county is paying prison inmates $2 an hour to help in moving the bodies of deceased COVID-19 victims, reported CBS News.
Prison labor is not new, but as COVID-19 outbreaks in prisons have become an issue throughout the pandemic, Stout is hoping that the additional help will prevent inmates from moving the bodies.
The deployment of the National Guard comes as residents in El Paso received self-administered COVID-19 tests at their doorsteps.
Each test is delivered through automated drones at the doorsteps of customers who bought them from Walmart.
Residents can administer their own nasal swab and send back samples through mail to Quest Diagnostics for testing, said a report from Daily Mail.
El Paso is only one part of the U.S. experiencing a surge in coronavirus cases.
On Friday, the entire U.S. recorded 195,000 new virus cases, the ninth time this month a new single-day record has been set for infections.
There were also some 1,300 deaths a day since Sunday and hospitalizations went up 82,000 on Friday.
In El Paso, there are a total of about 80,291 cases and 853 deaths with 1,074 new infections and eight deaths reported on Saturday, according to the county's COVID-19 dashboard.
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