Week 85 10/25-11/1/2021

With temperatures falling, our activities changing - making way for the Winter Holiday routine. We went to our first concert in two years last Friday. The Museum of Fine Arts and Dillard's are next on the agenda - all in good time.

Last Friday's concert at Houston's Wortham Center in the Theater District required proof of Vaccination and ID. Masks were also to be worn throughout the show. This was good since it was practically a sell-out. My husband and I felt like one of those closely-packed-cubes you play with in Chemistry Class: people seated all around us (on either side, front, backs and on upper levels. Having been constrained to online performances last year, this was the first time the DaCamera audience had been together in over one year. You could feel the buzz in people's faces as they scanned the audience for friends. And, when they spotted someone, they pulled their mask down and Yell-Greeted one another. While the music was superb, we left early during intermission because a woman behind us started coughing - this is where we drew the Covid-19 musical bar line.

The data for the week is a continuation of the last with an eye on the Panhandle and the West Texas portion of the Border. This due to reports that Colorado is the latest state to see NYT red with high increases over the last week. As Figure 1 shows (blue arrows), the state is

in line for cooler temperatures which enter via fronts traveling South-Southeast. Similarly, people from these latest "Hot Spots" come across our border in the course of their job or recreational life - whether this is a football game over the weekend or a military training exercise over the next few days. Since spread does not respect state lines, I expect to see more pronounced increases in cases and hospitalizations which will in turn advance to other parts of the state later. Right now, these trends are in their early stages.

The latest per 100k data from New Mexico are as follows: 32.3 (Dona Ana County) to 65.6 cases per 100k (Otero County) compared with 19.7 for El Paso County. Such results are increases from Week 84 (which was also higher than Week 83 data). Figure 2 show are the Average Hospitalizations

for the Border and Panhandle through Week 85. In both regions, cases and hospitalizations trend well with each other - both in the Delta Increase beginning at the end of June and the wind-down during September. A Panhandle Hospitalization plateau (blue bars) has formed indicating that the balance between Panhandle Deaths plus Recoveries are in range with severe new cases which have just begun to rise. One year ago (red lines with arrows comparing 11/1/2020 and 11/1/2021) cases were twice as high as they are now (747 vs. 337 hospitalized patients averaged over previous week). This part of Texas has been resistant to Vaccination and finds itself at only 47.4% of the 12+ population (presently eligible) with two doses. This is more than 10% behind the rest of the state (at 63%, see Figure 3).

The Border has two subregions which are essentially separate from each other due to distance (800 miles) and stretches of very low population (e.g. Big Bend National Park). Figure 2 shows two Border peaks during the Winter Surge that began during October, 2020. The first represents the contribution of Trauma Service Area I (El Paso). Once this part of the state has peaked (during November), numbers for TSA T(Laredo) and V(Rio Grande Valley) dominate the Border composite (maximum total average Covid hospitalization during late January 2021.

As shown in Figure 4, the El Paso New cases are on the rise between September 1 and October 31. https://www.epstrong.org/results.php, .

However, the Covid-19 Hospitalization Resources picture is stable indicating that the High Vaccination Rate (El Paso at 77% of 12+ Fully Vaccinated) is holding the severe cases requiring extended stays and ICU resources is down from 100% since early October (See Figure 6: https://covid-texas.csullender.com/?tsa=I , time axis between September 1 @ 11.6 to October 31 @ 19.7).

The rest of the State enters November with the lowest metrics since last February's Freeze. While everyone was out and about in their new Astros Nun Rally costumes, I am on the hunt for a box of Covid-19 Quick Tests to govern face-to-face interactions over the holidays.