Reuters
The scene inside United Memorial Medical Center in Houston has become all too familiar: overwhelmed medical staff fighting to curb the wave of COVID-19 patients that come through the hospital’s doors every day. While in earlier pandemic hot spots like New York the medical emergency has subsided, Texas is among the many U.S. states battling a resurgence of the virus that is straining their healthcare systems. Dr. Joseph Varon, the chief medical officer of United Memorial Medical Center (UMMC), said he is afraid he will soon face a dilemma many doctors elsewhere said they confronted earlier in the pandemic: deciding who to save. “I’m afraid that at some point in time I’m going to have to make some very serious decisions,” he told Reuters in an interview. “I’m starting to get the idea that I cannot save everybody.”