BENJAMIN PETIT FOR “THE WORLD”
ReportageThe second wave hits the city hard on the Mexican border as Texas became the first US state to exceed one million cases of Covid-19.
The intense anxiety raised by the results of the hardly appeased presidential election, it was necessary to return to the other great subject of anxiety of the moment, in the United States as elsewhere: the Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc in the country, where there were 241,460 deaths as of Wednesday, November 11. The place that occupies people’s minds and concentrates fears is located in West Texas, on the edge of Mexico, just in front of a very affected Mexican city, Ciudad Juarez. El Paso, 682,000 inhabitants of which at least 80% are Latinos, is a modern city, where many Californians have settled in recent years, on the edge of the desert and along the Rio Grande.
A rather calm and well-kept town, where hospitals are now overflowing with sick people and where medical teams from neighboring towns are brought in, in disaster, but also mobile morgues to accommodate the bodies of deceased patients, far too many for local burial capacities. In the space of a few days, El Paso turned into a giant cluster, with 863 new cases and 14 deaths on Wednesday alone. One thousand and ninety-one patients were hospitalized, including 279 in intensive care and 205 in intensive care. According to authorities’ estimates, nearly 30,000 people are carriers of the virus and 51% of hospitalizations are linked to the coronavirus. Sad record, Texas became the first US state to exceed one million cases of Covid-19.
As often, politics very quickly got involved in health affairs. From October 30, Ricardo Samaniego, magistrate of El Paso County, tried to impose a lockdown, but he encountered resistance from the Republican establishment, in this state won by Donald Trump during the presidential election. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott first, head on against this measure “Illegal and harmful”, arguing that residents had already suffered too much during the first phase of the pandemic.
El Paso Mayor Dee Margo went on to say that the judge’s decision risked plunging his city into dire straits. Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, throwing himself into the fight to tip the scales in favor of opening stores. Wasted effort. The magistrate not having given up, the measure finally came into force after several days of floating. It forces all non-essential businesses to close their doors until 1er December.
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