COVID-19 patients will be 'sent home to die' if deemed too sick, Texas county says BY CHACOUR KOOP
The situation was not always as dire in this rural South Texas county.
Starr County once went about three weeks without a COVID-19 case at the beginning of the pandemic. It banned large gatherings, tested hundreds of residents a day, issued stay-at-home orders and required face masks — many of the same mandates now commonplace across the U.S. The poor and mostly Latino county on the Mexico border was containing COVID-19.
“A model for the country,” Starr County Judge Eloy Vera said Tuesday — as he shared an update that now appears gloomy.
In April, its aggressive and successful approach to beating the coronavirus was spotlighted by NBC News.
“We are very proud at this point that our numbers are very low, considering we are an at-risk population and the disparity in medical services and our low socio-economic population,” Joel Villareal, mayor of county seat Rio Grande City, told NBC News. “We rank as one of the poorest counties in the nation. However, that does not deter us.”
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