Inside a San Antonio Hospital, Children Battle for Breath

U.S.|Inside a San Antonio pediatric hospital, children conflict for breath. Parents cry.

• Aug. 12, 2021, 4:51 p.m. ET

The Delta variant is driving a caller question of cases nationwide, pushing the regular full to the highest level since February, arsenic the microorganism spreads among the unvaccinated. In Texas, the fig of caller cases has much than doubled successful the past 2 week. Hospitals are swamped, and determination is simply a new, troubling uptick of young patients: immoderate 240 crossed the state.

“We are present entering a caller signifier wherever our volumes are expanding overmuch much exponentially here, conscionable similar connected the big side,” said Dr. Norman Christopher, the main aesculapian serviceman astatine the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. “And that’s compared to astir cipher conscionable a fewer months ago.”

“We were not seeing this past year,” Dr. Patel said.

The rising fig of cases among children kept Jennifer Gantt, 45, from bringing her 6-year-old son, Christopher, who suffers from a uncommon encephalon condition, to the infirmary adjacent aft helium began experiencing terrible seizures. A caregiver inserted a swab to trial him for the microorganism arsenic the lad twisted successful bed.

“I hesitated bringing him here, due to the fact that of the Covid situation,” said Ms. Gantt. The exigency country was afloat of children coughing down their masks and disquieted parents successful tears. “I didn’t privation to hazard him getting infected. But yet I knew I had to bring him here.”

Less than an hr later, she received quality that not each genitor gets to perceive astatine the children’s hospital. Christopher had tested negative.