CHRISTUS – San Marcos Nears COVID Treatment Capacity

By Terra Rivers | Managing Editor

On Thursday, June 25, the San Marcos City Council received a status report and update on the response to COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the topics of the discussion was the recent spike in hospitalizations throughout Texas due to COVID-19.

According to Director of Public Safety, Chase Stapp, CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital – San Marcos began keeping local COVID-19 patients within approximately the last two weeks.   

“CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital – San Marcos began keeping local COVID patients in the last week or so,” Stapp said. “And our understanding is that they are at capacity of treating those patients on any given day. That’s different than their overall hospital capacity.”

Director of Emergency Management, Rachel Ingle, said Seton still has plenty of beds available for treating patients; the hospital has a total of 22 ventilators with a majority of them still available.

Ingle reported CHRISTUS San Marcos has only six ventilators, three of which are currently being used.

“Their plans at this time is if they receive patients where they can’t accept them due to the severity or the needs of the patient to require a ventilator, and they have none available,” Ingle said, “They’ll divert those patients to either Round Rock or New Braunfels. And they’re going to do those within their own system.”

Ingle said they’ll look at a regional plan when regional hospital capacity gets past that full.

Corridor News reached out Monday to the health system for more information but has not received a response.

However, on Friday, June 26, CHRISTUS San Rosa Health System released an update reporting CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospitals – New Braunfels and – San Marcos, as well as the system’s ambulatory surgery centers, remained available for elective surgeries.

“We completely understand and support the governor’s efforts to preserve critical hospital capacity needed to treat possible COVID-19 positive patients,” CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System said. “We have designated physician review teams at all our CHRISTUS facilities to closely consider proposed elective procedures to determine what course of action is in the best interest of the patient.”

Governor Greg Abbott has canceled all elective procedures in Harris, Bexar, Dallas, Travis, Cameron, Hidalgo, Nueces, and Web counties until further notice in an effort to retain availability of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients.

Austin, as of Monday, were nearing 70% hospital capacity due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.

According to the Austin COVID-19 dashboard Monday, the Austin Metropolitan Area currently has 368 hospitalizations, 121 ICU patients, and 65 patients on ventilators between Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis, and Williamson counties.

Hays County’s had a total of 63 hospitalizations, according to the dashboard, with 19 still currently hospitalized.