The outbreak in Texas

This week’s COVID-19 digest

The state of Texas added people aged 50 and over Monday to the list of those who are eligible to receive the vaccine. The addition of this group –

Phase 1C – brings another 12 million to 14 million Texans into the pipeline for vaccines, joining more than 10 million people in Phases 1A and 1B.

On Wednesday, the state reached a new milestone, having officially given the first shot of the vaccines to 1 in 4 Texans over age 16. It’s expected that as vaccine supplies increase with the recent approval of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the speed at which Texans are vaccinated will increase.

Across the state, more than six million people have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. More than three million Texans are fully vaccinated.

In Harris County, 1.3 million vaccines have been administered, resulting in about 931,000 people, or 26 percent of the population age 16 and older having received at least one dose of the vaccine.

While Harris County continues to see outsize demand for the vaccine allocations, other counties in Texas have more doses on hand than they have demand for. As a result, Liberty County, Matagorda County and others announced public events where they opened their vaccination opportunities to anyone over the age of 18

The state recorded 28,832 new cases, the lowest number of new cases since the week of Sept. 11, 2020. Hospitalizations remained low as well this week, with 3,752 patients hospitalized for COVID-19 statewide, the lowest it’s been since Oct. 10.

There were 918 newly reported deaths in Texas, the 23rd-highest weekly death toll since the start of the pandemic.

The positive test rate continued to fall and is now 6.29 percent. The last time it was this low was late September of 2020.