McAllen, Texas, Grapples With Covid-19 Pandemic

Nurse Taylor Olson, 26, a nurse from Naples, Florida, holds the phone up to the ear of Coronavirus patient for the patient's daughter as the patient slowly passes away in the extension of the Intensive Care Unit of the Serious Infectious Disease Unit--built in a former warehouse of a hospice--at the Doctors Hospital at Renaissance in Edinburg Texas, July 8, 2020. Because loved ones are not permitted to visit wards dedicated to COVID-19 patients--both for their own safety as much as for the safety of the patients and staff-- Olson had promised the woman's daughter she would hold her hand and be by the woman's side during her death, and was able to let the daughter of the woman passing speak with her mother as she passed away. The pandemic has reached the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, one of the poorest and most medically vulnerable populations in the country, where the demographics map onto the risk factors identified by the Center for Disease Control for COVID-19. The virus is ripping through this community on a straight up trajectory. The hospitals are completely full, and there is nowhere for the sick patients to go, and no one to care for them. The RGV is the most uninsured region of the valley. (Photo by Lynsey Addario/Getty Images Reportage)