Texas Rio Grande Valley Gets Surge In Coroanvirus-Fighting Aid

AUSTIN, TX — Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday announced the Department of Defense will surge resources to the Rio Grande Valley to help combat the coronavirus.

To that end, Abbott said the defense department will send a U.S. Army Urban Augmentation Medical Task Force to provide medical and support professionals needed in Rio Grande Valley hospitals. Additionally, the Texas Division of Emergency Management is coordinating with local officials to identify alternate sites, such as area hotels, and contract medical staff to care for and house patients that are recovering from COVID-19, according to an advisory. The move will ensure additional hospital capacity in both Cameron and Hidalgo counties, the governor noted.

"As the State of Texas mitigates the spread of COVID-19, we are continuing to work closely with our local and federal partners to identify outbreaks and provide our communities with the resources they need to keep Texans safe," Abbott said. "I am grateful to our federal partners at the Department of Defense for sending these teams to the Valley and working within the community to protect public health and combat this virus. These teams, coupled with our newly established partnership with local hotels, will aid in our efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 and ensure adequate hospital capacity in the Valley."

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Abbott noted additional Department of Defense teams are prepared to support the state and will be announced as teams are assigned.

The move comes three days after Abbott secured extended U.S. Department of Health and Human Services federal support of Community-Based Testing Sites in Dallas and Houston through July 31 to screen for the coronavirus. The cities have been the hardest hit by the illness scourge, reporting the state's highest concentrations of illness and related deaths.

The state has seen an exponential rise in coronavirus cases since Abbott launched an aggressive economic reopening on May 1, becoming the second governor in the nation after Georgia to try restarting a pandemic-stalled economy as other states waited for illness trends to flatten. In announcing the reopening in late April, Abbott assured the multi-phase initiative was being informed by insight offered by "doctors and data," as he often put it during news conferences.

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Abbott has taken several steps recently as he now tries to stem the growing tide of illness. Among those measures was his reordering bars to close up again. For the second time since the onset of illness, he also banned all elective surgeries and medical procedures to ensure hospital space for an anticipated influx of coronavirus patients. Abbott also paused his own economic expansion, which amounted not to more closures but a halt in allowing already-opened businesses to operate at 100 percent capacity.

In a dramatic development, Abbott also mandated the wearing of protective face coverings across the state to help blunt the spread of illness — a departure for him after initially extolling the virtues of "personal responsibility" in making mask usage optional. Still, he issued an executive order waiving the requirement for those attending worship services he deemed "essential services" not subject to the most rigid safeguards in protecting constitutional religious rights, Abbott has suggested in the past.