Week 77, August 30-September 5, 2021

Data just before and after a holiday is always suspect. Before the holiday, people are on their best behavior so that everything goes according to plan. Afterwards, people will get tested based on whether travel or some other activity may have put them at risk. . Typically, five days are needed for symptoms to present themselves. So, by the end of next week - specimens may go up but the actual cases and hospitalizations won't be logged until Week 79.

There have been reports that numbers are flat or going down. My theory is that the testing "pipeline" is maxed out; therefore, results will be back-logged later in the month. What I hear is that Hospitals in the Houston (TSA-Q) and Galveston (TSA-R) are turning patients away.

Vaccination Report. This week, several Border Counties were able to complete the inoculation of over 2% of their eligible population (12 and up). These are the largest weekly increases we have seen to date. Nevertheless, the Gulf Coast Region overall had the largest average incremental increase at 1.4% ( keeping pace with the Border @ 1.3% and North Texas 1.2%). At these rates, the Gulf Coast should make its 70% target by early November (see Figure 1)

In order to more fully protect against Covid-19 and compensate for the vaccine-opposed Panhandle, the other four regions will need to exceed 70% in order for Texas's totals to get there by the end of the year.

Hospitalization Report Figure 2 reports the Hospitalization trends side-by-side for each region. These are on a per 100k population in order to put all of the results on the same scale. With their low fraction of the population vaccinated, the Panhandle and North Texas have per-person Covid-19 Hospitalizations of 48. Other states in the country in the same regime include: Tennessee (51) and Kentucky (53). These are far below Florida (69), the nation's most torrid Hot Spot. (Note: the NYTimes has had to add purple to its legend for colored maps since the whole country is now reading red).

At the other end of the scale, the Border is in the mid-20's, a metric that compares with Minnesota (26) , Kansas (26), and Montana (26). Central Texas (39) looks like Nevada (38). The Gulf Coast, as I have defined it, covers all counties in the Houston Metro area as well as the Rio Grande Valley, Nueces County (Corpus Christi, Padre Island, and Nueces County). While the weather forced closing the Beach last week, "Cheap Hotels on South Padre Island" is trending on Google right now. Visitors should be aware that Corpus Christi/TSA-U have not had an open ICU for one month now with almost 2/3 of them occupied with Covid-19 patients (See Figure 3, https://covid-texas.csullender.com/?tsa=U.

In Galveston/TSA-R, 100% ICU's are in use with half occupied by Covid-19; Houston/TSA-Q is in the same situation with 96% ICU's taken.

I track Hospitalization metrics since the full picture of Cases does not come out just before a holiday weekend. Any article that says "cases are down" or "cases have plateaued" needs to also present a comparison of what they were like under last Winter's high Covid-19 Hospitalization Surge and also Testing numbers. Otherwise, you may not be getting the full picture, i.e. Testing is down; Testing results have not been received, Testing turnaround has increased). What we do hear about are: Schools closed. For this information, I reccomd the Texas Tribune article: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/03/texas-covid-school-districts-shut-down/

It includes a table (5 screens large) of school districts. An example of one is shown below in Figure 4.

While none are in the Houston Metro area, they do quote Phil Edwards, the superintendent of Angleton ISD in Brazoria County. "“Each week that the kids have been back, we’ve just seen those numbers increase dramatically, and that has been very stressful and very concerning to me,” said Phil Edwards, superintendent of Angleton ISD, which has almost 7,000 students."