Abbott: We need you to get the flu vaccine
Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday urged Texans to get flu vaccines early and take action to protect themselves to avoid overburdening already-strained Texas hospitals dealing with the pandemic.
“With a flu season that could be prolific, if that leads to greater hospitalizations, coupled with the hospitalizations they’re seeing for COVID-19, you could easily see how hospitals in this region as well as across Texas will be completely overrun with an inability for hospitals to take care of the medical needs of everybody in the entire region,” Abbott said in an appearance at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
The Republican governor made the comments in a news conference following a closed-door roundtable discussion about the flu season with top health and medical officials and state lawmakers, including UT Southwestern Medical Center President Dr. Daniel K. Podolsky.
As of Thursday, the rate at which Texans were testing positive for COVID-19 was up to 17 percent, according to state data. Abbott has previously said a positivity rate of above 10 percent is a warning flag.
The number of new confirmed cases has slowly started to decline in some parts of the state, including Harris County, though the 7day rolling average statewide continues to increase.
Hospitalizations statewide from coronavirus have also decreased slightly since peaking at nearly 11,000 in July but still remain high at about 8,300 as of Thursday, when the state reported 11,600 available beds.
“We must sustain that, and we must sustain that at the very least through the flu season,” Texas Department of State Health Services Commissioner Dr. John Hellerstedt said of the downward trend. “Let’s stay where we are in terms of the vigilance and discipline that we have for the measures to prevent COVID-19, and in doing so, I hope, we’ll have the very mildest flu season in history.”
Abbott attributed downward COVID-19 trends to Texans “almost uniformly” adopting the practice of wearing a mask and social distancing. The governor also warned Texans that family gatherings “keep surfacing as a spreading event for COVID-19.”
“Everyone must understand this very simple principle: Until we have medicines that are capable of treating COVID-19, the only tool we have to slow its spread is by everybody adopting these practices,” Abbott said.
As some schools prepare to open in September, Abbott said personal protective equipment will be in even higher demand. The Texas Department of Emergency Management has started distributing supplies to school districts, including 60 million masks and 560,000 gallons of hand sanitizer, and Abbott said it will continue to provide more over the course of the school year.
Abbott and other officials Thursday emphasized the importance of as many people as possible getting the flu vaccine, which generally hits shelves around September. It could be an uphill battle, early indicators show.
A state report last month showed child vaccination rates are down by about 44 percent this summer, normally the busiest time of the year, which experts said is likely in large part because of parental fear of contracting the virus in a doctor’s office as well as the anti-vaccine movement. Nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported decreased immunizations since COVID-19 began spreading.
And an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in May showed that only about half of Americans said they would get a COVID-19 vaccine if it became available.
Dr. Kavita Bhavan, associate professor of infectious diseases at UT Southwestern, said Thursday that she and her colleagues are working on improving public education in this area. One such project involves designating high school students in underserved communities as health ambassadors to build trust, which she said has had good initial results.
“The ability to vaccinate has been there, but the uptake can be improved,” Bhavan said. “We’re continuing to work in that space and develop research to think through communities that are underserved and undervaccinated, how can we improve upon that?”