Hospitals in Texas and Florida straining to care for the wave of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients have procured fleets of mobile mortuary trailers in anticipation of swelling fatalities due to the delta strain.
Texas health officials requested five mortuary trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Aug. 4, according to Douglas Loveday, press officer for the Texas Department of State Health Services.
“We don’t know of any place that needs these now due to COVID, but part of a response is being prepared for what could happen. Knowing that it takes a few weeks for these to arrive, we wanted to go ahead and put the request in,” Loveday told the Washington Examiner.
TEXAS TO BRING OUT-OF-STATE HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS TO HELP OVERWHELMED HOSPITALS
The mobile mortuaries in Texas will be stationed in San Antonio for now, ready to be deployed to hospitals at the request of local officials. Several Texas hospitals are nearing patient capacity due to the rapid spread of the delta variant among the unvaccinated population and have begun erecting overflow tents in the event that hospital admissions outpace staffed beds.
Nearly 11,800 Texans are currently being treated for COVID-19 in hospitals, the highest total since late January, according to state tracking data. Gov. Greg Abbott, an opponent of vaccine mandates, directed state officials last week to work with out-of-state healthcare staffing agencies to bring more providers into the state’s battered hospitals. He also requested that hospitals voluntarily suspend all elective surgeries in order to preserve limited beds and manpower.
In Florida, meanwhile, Baptist Health, a Jacksonville hospital, also has a trailer on its campus to be used “if needed,” according to a hospital spokesperson. The trailer can also be deployed to one of the five other Baptist Health hospital campuses.
Hospitalizations linked to the delta variant in Florida have exceeded all previous records during the pandemic. More than 15,600 COVID-19 patients are currently receiving treatment in Florida hospitals, according to tracking from the New York Times.
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Deaths due to COVID-19 have risen 71% in Texas and 191% in Florida over the past two weeks. In Florida, coronavirus-related fatalities have reached levels not seen since the winter surge. Roughly 150 people in Florida died due to COVID-19 over the past week, coming close to the January high of about 185 daily deaths on average.
The trailers, which are sometimes referred to as “mobile morgues,” have been used previously during the pandemic to operate as overflow capacity when mortalities exceeded space for bodies in the hospitals. For instance, FEMA provided New York City with 85 mortuary trailers in Spring 2020 as hospitals struggled to keep up with the volume of seriously ill patients.
CORRECTION: In a previous version of this story, the Washington Examiner reported the AdventHealth hospital system in Florida purchased mortuary trailers. It did not. The Washington Examiner regrets the error.
