Nearly 50,000 people across the United States remain hospitalized for COVID-19.
As of Sunday, the number of current hospitalizations nationwide was 47,502, according to data collected by The COVID Tracking Project.
That figure has been steadily climbing since mid-September.
– El Paso County gets 4th mobile morgue as death toll rises
The El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office set up a fourth refrigerated mobile morgue as the COVID-19 death toll in the westernmost Texas county surpassed 600, according to a report by El Paso ABC affiliate KVIA.
“My understanding is that we just got our fourth one,” El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego told KVIA on Sunday afternoon.
As of early Monday, El Paso county had confirmed a total of 50,114 cases of COVID-19 including at least 602 deaths. There were 943 patients who remained hospitalized with the disease, including 271 in intensive care units.
The death toll is expected to continue to rise as the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in ICUs and on ventilators reached an all-time high over the weekend. Health experts have said that many ventilator patients ultimately don’t survive the disease.
The El Paso County judge recently ordered a shutdown of all non-essential services and businesses for two weeks in a bid to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office announced Saturday that it would begin aggressively enforcing Samaniego’s shutdown order, which is being challenged in court.
