DENTON COUNTY PEDIATRIC COVID DATA (JAN 11)
The moral failings in community and county leadership here are extraordinarily stunning from my perspective as both a parent and physician.
Tonight's pediatric COVID data for Denton County- again, this is data that is released every weekday by Denton County Public Health and what I've been tracking are the COVID cases just in those 0-18 years of age.
Today was the first time that pediatric COVID cases made up a large fraction of the new cases. Out of 1154 new COVID cases across all ages in Denton County, 572 of them were in the under 19 age group. I've never seen that myself in the all the time I've been tracking pandemic data for Denton County where half the new COVID cases were in kids.
First graph is the seven day average of new pediatric COVID cases for the county. Pretty clear the direction things have been heading EVEN BEFORE New Years Day and the start of the spring semester in Denton County schools. That's vital to note- holiday exposures were already driving increases in pediatric COVID cases and now that school has started, we are seeing what we expected- an acceleration of cases.
We are exceeding critical thresholds in every accepted pandemic parameter not just in kids, but across all age groups in Denton County. We have 375,000 unvaccinated in Denton County and just that group alone will be enough to severely strain already stressed critical care and medical resources.
Test positive rates are still climbing. 35.5% of COVID tests done in our county are positive, that's over 1/3 and it has never been that high in this pandemic.
Second graph shows the same data but as a seven day average of new daily pediatric COVID cases per 100,000 residents. As I have explained before, numbers per 100K allow us to compare different sized groups as we are normalizing for population differences. Denton County will very easily surpass the high water mark for pediatric COVID cases during the Delta surge in September by the end of this week.
Some have pointed out that today's new case numbers across all ages is down from yesterday. Despite that, pediatric COVID cases are continuing to increase.
The pediatric population is the least vaccinated age group and those under 5 are too young to be vaccinated. In-person school absent a mask mandate, proper social distancing protocols and remote options are the largest and most extensive congregate situation each day across Denton County in the midst of the most contagious and airborne COVID variant yet.
The third graph shows ICU hospitalizations per 100,000 people for the four most populous counties of the DFW Metroplex. And that data in this graph is five days old due to lags in data reporting. On January 6, for Denton County, the rate of ICU hospitalization for COVID was 3.7 per 100,000. That translates into 33 people admitted into ICUs across Denton County for COVID on that day.
And that number is increasing each day for every county in the DFW Metroplex.
I don't think it takes much complex mathematics or science to know what the ICU hospitalization rate will be this week.
Ask yourself who is really fighting for our children.
The data here shows that Denton County is failing to protect our children. Nearly one-quarter of the pediatric population of Denton County are students in the Lewisville ISD school district.
Where is their mask mandate? Where are the scientific and medically proven tools and measures to protect our children? The moral failings in community and county leadership here are extraordinarily stunning from my perspective as both a parent and physician.
If the leadership of the school districts and this county were were a physician, they would not only be sued for malpractice, they would get their medical license suspended not just for violating standards of care, but for being an imminent danger to the community.