Rural hospitals in US hit by pandemic

COVID catching up to small facilities once largely unscathed

In Childress, Texas, people with COVID-19 symptoms seeking treatment at the local hospital are asked to wait in their cars when possible.

"They're either stacking up in the waiting room or out in the parking lot," said Holly Holcomb, chief operating officer for the Childress Regional Medical Center, adding that her six-bed emergency room has been stretched to the limit.

A man who arrived at the emergency room in October did not have COVID-19. However, his serious abdominal condition required surgery, hospital administrators told The Texas Tribune.

He waited more than nine hours in the emergency room while doctors called eight larger hospitals to see if they could perform the surgery, Holcomb said. They declined to accept the patient and the man died, the Tribune reported.

"I've been here 24 years and I don't ever remember not being able to transfer a patient out," said Holcomb, whose hospital in the town of about 6,900 is near the Oklahoma border.

The COVID-19 pandemic raging across the United States is overwhelming many hospitals, large and small, but especially the latter.

When the first wave of cases hit the country in March, rural communities were left largely unscathed.

The "beast", as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called it, had made his state its epicenter.