Calls for virus vigilance
‘Time to sound the alarm’ as hospitalizations rise
COVID-19 hospitalizations are surging again in the Houston area, according to the latest data, an inauspicious development as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches.
Daily COVID-19 hospital admissions nearly doubled thisweek compared to one month ago, the Texas Medical Center reported Friday, a reflection of the coronavirus’ increased spread. The number of confirmed cases began creeping up a month ago, then jumped higher in the last two weeks.
“It feels like we’re sitting on an explosive, the fuse lit, waiting for it to go off,” said Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, president of the Harris Health Sys-
tem, whose safety-net hospitals were overwhelmed this summer. “This is the time to sound the alarm, that we need to take this opportunity to practice proper mask wearing and social distancing so we don’t become the next El Paso.”
Currently, Texas hospitals have 7,083 COVID-19 patients, the most since Aug. 12, when the numbers had dropped roughly halfway fromthe mid-July high point of nearly 11,000. The numbers fell to slightly under 3,200 in early October.
Nowhere is the situation more serious than El Paso County, where 1,312 people are hospitalized with the disease and which reported 1,488 new cases Friday. That’s in a county of 800,000 people.
New campaign planned
Earlier this week, Houston-area hospitalizations topped 1,000 for the first time since September, according to data maintained by the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council, which oversees the emergency medical response in Harris County and the surrounding counties. The number dropped to 940 on Friday.
COVID-19 hospitalizations are “the ultimate truth, the sign the spread that began two weeks ago is real. When someone is sick enough that they need to be hospitalized, you can’t hide that,” said William McKeon, president of the Texas Medical Center.
Medical Center leaders plan to launch a messaging campaign next week emphasizing the need for families to create their own “holiday bubble,” similar to the one the NBA implemented, McKeon said. Under guidelines developed by Baylor College of Medicine, the bubbles call for each family member to each assess his or her risk, get tested before the gathering and then quarantine and wear a mask whenever traveling brings them in contact with people.
The Medical Center’s COVID-19 reports thisweek show an average of about 140 new daily COVID-19 admissions among its member hospitals in the area, up from around100 aweek ago and 75 a month ago. The number had held steady around 75 for a couple months before the recent increase.
Worsening situation
Houston hospital leaders said doctors and staff are able to manage the increasing flow of COVID-19 admissions for now but worry that a continuation of the trend could bring a return to levels like those seen in during the middle of the summer, a time of great strain in the Medical Center. They noted the trend has already begun in other parts of the state, nation andworld, and projections call for it to reach a crisis point this winter because of the cold weather and people gathering indoors for the holidays.
Barring an unexpected change, the situation figures to get worse since hospitalizations lag a couple weeks behind the diagnosis of cases. The number of new Houston-area COVID-19 cases, in the 600s in early October, rose to the 1,000s last week and the 1,100s thisweek. On Friday, the state reported 1,342 cases in the area.
“There are lots of indicators we’re going to see a further increase in hospitalizations,” said Dr. Marc Boom, president of Houston Methodist. “It’s got me worried big time.”
Boom noted that the seven-day rolling average COVID-19 positive test rate at Methodist was 11.8 percent Friday. On Sept. 19, the rate was 4.1 percent.
Methodist’s COVID-19 census is currently about 230, a level it hadn’t seen since August. Just a few weeks ago, it was around 160. Harris Health is at 46, way down from summer’s high point of 189, but up from 26 a month ago.
Porsa said he shudders to think “what might happen if we don’t control this, given Thanksgiving likely could be a series of super-spreader events, worse than Memorial Day or the Fourth of July.”
Transmission rate up
Hospitalizations weren’t the only concerning metric in the Texas Medical Center report. Its COVID-19 positive test rate is now 5.2 percent, lower than Methodist’s, but up from 4.4 percent a week ago and 3.4 percent a month ago. At that time, leaders were talking about hoping to bring it down around 1 percent.
In addition, the amount of COVID-19 transmission, the so- called Rt rate, remains above 1, the level at which spread increases. The rate has now been above that benchmark for about five straight weeks, after a sustained period in the late summer as low as 0.68. An Rt below 1 means the virus is burning out in a community.
Boom worries that the metrics are looking like they did in June before the virus spread out of control.
“This week’s good news about the vaccine was cause to celebrate, a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel,” Boom said. “But it’s a much longer tunnel than we’d like, certainly several more months. Theway it’s going, it’s going to be a challenging trip. During that time, people need to do everything they can to hold the virus at bay.”