Texas virus spread even puts desert artist hub Marfa on edge

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas surpassed 9,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients Tuesday for the first time since a deadly summer outbreak as the pandemic's spread threatened the Big Bend region near the desert artist hub of Marfa, where tourists continued visiting and officials urged people to stay home.

The rising number of cases near the remote West Texas border is but another example of how the virus is now spreading into places that ducked previous surges but are now ensnared by its long-reaching tentacles and confronted with its wide-ranging challenges.

Texas reported more than 15,000 new cases Tuesday, smashing the previous single-day record. State health officials attributed at least some of the spike to a lag in reporting over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, but doctors and local leaders still say they're trending in the wrong direction.

Marfa is located about 200 miles (321.87 kilometers) down the border from El Paso, where hospitalizations have fallen slightly after a grim November. The town of roughly 1,700 people is the second-largest in Presidio County, where in the past two weeks the number of cases since the pandemic began has doubled to at least 460 confirmed cases, according to state health figures.

The county borders Ojinagao, Mexico, and the only hospital in rural Alpine has just enough beds to treat only a handful of COVID-19 patients.

“I feel safer going to the grocery store in Ojinaga than to the grocery store in Alpine,” said Malynda Richardson, the only paramedic in the city of Presidio, where she is also the director of emergency management services. She, too, recently tested positive for COVID-19.

Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara said that one in 13 people in the West Texas county have contracted COVID-19. She said the main concern for the county, which spans nearly 4000...