'We are no less American': Deaths pile up on Texas border

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas (AP) — When labor pains signaled that Clarissa Muñoz was at last going to be a mom, she jumped in a car and headed two hours down the Texas border into one of the nation’s most dire coronavirus hot spots.She went first to a hospital so desperate for help that nurses recently made 49 phone calls to find a bed 700 miles away to airlift a dying man with the virus. In July alone, Hidalgo County reported more than 600 deaths — more than the Houston area, which is five times larger.At DHR Health, one of the largest hospitals on the border, nearly 200 of the 500 beds belong to coronavirus patients isolated in two units. Across the street, alarms blared constantly in a coronavirus intensive-care unit, summoning nurses to roll patients onto their stomachs to force more air into their lungs.“It’s a really, really ugly feeling,” Muñoz said of watching her son being taken away.Texas reopened quicker than most of the U.S., only to backtrack in the face of massive outbreaks. They weren’t going to let me get my son out of the hospital unless I was negative,” said her husband, Nicolas Garcia.After the birth, her son was a phone app away: The hospital lets COVID-positive mothers call the nursery over a video chat.