“Ideally, everybody would take this thing seriously and follow the steps that we know work, which is primarily get vaccinated and boosted, but also be smart about gatherings and wear a mask,” said John Henderson, the president and CEO of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals. Those numbers are concerning, especially if hospitalizations have yet to peak during the latest wave. That leaves only 315 available adult ICU beds across the entire state. As of January 12, 87 percent of available ICU beds across more than 500 Texas hospitals are in use, and about a third of those beds are filled with Covid-19 patients. That has put hospital capacity under strain yet again. Pediatric hospitalizations, which are on the rise nationally, increased by 200 percent in the state between Christmas and January 3.
It’s the first time Texas has had more than 10,000 Covid-19 hospitalizations since September 2021. Hospitalizations have more than doubled since last month to over 11,500, including over 2,200 patients in the ICU.
The numbers aren’t encouraging: On Wednesday, more than 61,000 Texans were confirmed to have tested positive for the virus, but given the prevalence of home testing and that people might be sick but not testing at all, the numbers are likely much higher. Together, the infectiousness of omicron and Texans’ resistance to getting the vaccine have created a crisis for hospitals and medical workers, one that disproportionately puts unvaccinated people in danger. And due to the state’s relatively low vaccination rates, and a Republican state government that has fought public health officials’ recommendations on masking, vaccine mandates, and business restrictions, matters may not improve soon.Īlthough the symptoms of Covid-19 are typically milder for the vaccinated, omicron is more transmissible than previous variants, even among people who have had two shots. Like many states across the country grappling with the onset of the omicron variant, Texas’s fight against Covid-19 took a turn for the worse in December.
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