Many community hospitals in Southern California are struggling to treat a large influx of COVID-19 patients from Mexico, according to The Washington Post.
Most patients are U.S. residents who fell ill while working or visiting family across the border. Others either retired to Mexico or have dual citizenship.
The Post said it's become increasingly common for ambulances from Mexico to transport Americans to the closest U.S. hospital across the border. Some ambulance drivers have had to wait hours to drop off patients while hospitals try to make room for them.
El Centro (Calif.) Regional Medical Center is one such hospital seeing a flood of patients from Mexico. Last week, the hospital reached capacity and had to temporarily stop accepting new COVID-19 patients. El Centro Regional is in Imperial County, which now has the highest proportion of COVID-19 cases of any county in the state, at 760 cases per 100,000 population.
Overall, about half of the COVID-19 patients in several U.S. border hospitals have come from Mexico, according to the Post.
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