Iraan deals with ‘mentally taxing’ surge in COVID cases

IRAAN For the last couple of weeks, the city of Iraan has found itself buried by the pandemic as schools and the local hospital struggle with the surge in positive cases.

Iraan, which has a population of around 1,200 people, has seen the school district shut its doors for two weeks while the staff at Iraan General Hospital hobbled by the patient load.

The town has had 119 people test for the virus while 50 tested positive during a two-week span.

For a town that size, Iraan General Hospital CEO Jason Rybolt says those numbers can be “detrimental.”

“There’s been an increase in numbers,” Rybolt said. “There’s been a lot more positives, and for a small community, that can be detrimental. We’ve seen an increase in testing. We’ve seen an increase in positive numbers. We’ve had more sickness in the area. As far as how it’s affected us in the hospital, we’ve had a few cases where we had patients in that we ended up having to transfer some out that were severe enough and critical enough that needed to be at a higher level of care. The story there is it’s difficult to transfer to bigger hospitals because they’re either full or not accepting because of the patient’s status.”

Iraan lies 82.4 miles away from Odessa and 113 miles away from San Angelo.

“I think you’re seeing in a lot of places, not just here, an uptick in the virus, possibly the delta variant,” Rybolt said. “That’s leading to areas being like they are.”

On the Texas Department of Health and Human Services’ website, there were 1,469 confirmed cases in Pecos County with 343 probable cases and 36 fatalities with 91 active cases estimated as of Aug. 25. Pecos County’s population is 15,815.

The site also listed 1,685 people that are estimated to have recovered.

There were 18,826 newly confirmed cases across the state with 5,289 probable cases and 233 newly reported fatalities as of Wednesday afternoon.

ICU beds have been very limited in the state. Iraan General Hospital doesn’t include ICU.

“We’re a small, rural critical access hospital,” Rybolt said. “Our in-patient stuff is more minor.

Our critical stuff, we transfer out to higher levels of care such as Midland, Odessa (and) San Angelo.”

The staff size at Iraan General Hospital is not large with Rybolt saying they have just a little more than 50 full-time employees.

Rybolt says the biggest challenge has been the influx of hospital-need patients, patients that are in critical care.

“Our census is low on the in-patient side,” Rybolt said. “So we’re minimally staffed on our in-patient side. We have to call in additional nursing staff or borrow equipment if we don’t have the equipment to make sure that they get what they need before we get them to a higher level of care.”

So far, the last few weeks have been the worst that Rybolt and his staff at the hospital have seen since the pandemic started.

“This is the highest numbers that we’ve seen in our community,” Rybolt said.

Rybolt described the current situation as “mentally taxing.”

“It’s something that we’ve never seen,” Rybolt said. “It certainly wears on you when you’re dealing with critically ill patients. In a small community, some of the people that are sick, could be family members.”

Last week, Iraan-Sheffield ISD announced the decision to shut down for two weeks (from Aug. 17-30) just shortly after the school year started.

A press release from the school district stated that “the decision was made to ensure the safety of our students and staff; as well as to make certain that we have appropriate staff available for each campus.”

Calls to Iraan-Sheffield ISD Superintendent Tracy Canter were not returned.

The current surge in COVID cases has shown that even small communities like Iraan are not immune from an outbreak and Rybolt has urged everyone to be cautious.

“What I would say, as far as lessons would be to heed advice and try to do what you can to protect yourself,” Rybolt said. “Wear a mask and get a vaccine and socially distance when you can. I would also say to count your blessings every day.”