People with coronavirus are crossing the US-Mexico border for medical care
CNNCNN — Chris Van Gorder says he’s seeing a telling trend in the hospitals he runs. In a call with state hospital leaders earlier this month, the head of California’s emergency medical services authority, Dr. David Duncan, described the steady stream of patients coming to Imperial County as “gas on the fire.” “We’ve got this continual flow of Covid coming across the border in the form of US citizens that carry and continue to escalate and fuel the Covid pressures that we see,” Duncan said. What happened in California hospitals as more coronavirus patients crossed At El Centro Regional Medical Center in Imperial County, coronavirus cases started to climb in early May as the situation across the border in Mexicali worsened, says Adolphe Edward, the hospital’s CEO. I think that’s one reason why the number is as high as it is now.” The El Centro Regional Medical Center is shown Wednesday, May 20, 2020, in El Centro, Calif. Gregory Bull/AP About 90 miles to the west, Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista, which is across the border from Tijuana, was Officials began tracking the travel histories of patients there, and quickly spotted a trend: Many had recently been in Mexico. “It may be that they waited in Mexico too long, or they went to a Mexican hospital and decided to get their care here.” ‘It’s almost like a waterfall cascading’ The flow of patients across the border has been steady for weeks, says Coyle of the California Hospital Association.