ODESSA, Texas — Local hospitals are ready to take care of more COVID-19 patients if it becomes necessary.
Medical Center Hospital in Odessa is keeping tabs on COVID-19 hospitalizations and is ready to keep up with demand.
"We do have plans in place if we need extra floors, we already know which floors that we will move to should there be an overflow of COVID patients, so we have made those preparations," Trevor Tankersley, Director of Public Relations at MCH said.
As of Monday, there are 19 patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 at MCH, with 16 of them being in critical care.
Midland Memorial Hospital is also prepared to house more patients if necessary. On Monday, MMH had 28 patients hospitalized because of the virus, with seven of those patients on a ventilator.
MMH is upping the number of patients they'll be able to have, just to be prepared.
"We built an additional 48 beds on the top of the hospital, were operating some of those, we haven't needed all of them but were now staffing up to operate the rest of them," Russell Meyers, President of MMH said last week during a press conference.
The Delta variant of COVID-19 is part of the problem, with a high transmission rate and severe side effects.
Although those who are vaccinated can still get the new variant, side effects tend to be milder in those who are.
Doctors recommend getting the vaccine to help stop the spread of the virus, you can visit vaccines.gov to find a vaccination location near you.