Imperial Valley's hospitals were nearly overwhelmed by COVID patients, so San Diego sent help.
A brigade of ambulances, in the air and on the ground, worked through the day Wednesday to take the pressure off of El Centro Regional Medical Center, which has found itself at ground zero in a cross-border surge of COVID-19 patients that threatened to overwhelm the inland region’s two main hospitals.
Officials announced Tuesday morning that they were diverting all ambulance deliveries of additional COVID-19 patients to facilities in San Diego and Riverside counties, but those measures had been removed early Wednesday at El Centro Regional and neighboring Pioneers Memorial Hospital in nearby Brawley.
Hospitals all along California’s southern border have seen increasing emergency traffic and hospital admissions in recent weeks, and many have linked the slow surge to significant and deadly outbreaks underway in Mexico.
While COVID-19 patient counts have been up and down at hospitals in Chula Vista, a clear and fierce surge arrived in Imperial County over the weekend, flooding emergency rooms for days.