DENTON COUNTY PEDIATRIC COVID DATA, JANUARY 25
The largest school district in the county shuts down, but to what extent?
Denton County Public Health data released yesterday shows a continued significant increase in COVID case numbers across all ages in the Denton County as well as in the pediatric population indicates continued acceleration of the community spread of the virus.
Three graphs for this post, first one is the seven day average of new pediatric cases in the county. The faint blue line represents the new pediatric COVID cases reported each day.
The second graph is the same data, but as a seven day average of pediatric cases per 100,000, using the pediatric population of Denton County as the cohort (225,615 kids in our county). The orange vertical bars the the new pediatric COVID cases reported each day. Incidents per 100K is a standard way of expressing prevalence of a given disease state in a population and it allows us to compare two different sized populations.
The third graph shows COVID hospitalizations per 100,000 for the four largest counties of the DFW Metroplex. Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, and Denton are all in the top ten largest counties in Texas by population and Collin County and Denton County are the largest and second largest suburban counties in Texas respectively. That is NOT who gets hospitalized for COVID out of those with infected, but the prevalence of COVID hospitalization for everyone in each county, infected or not. Because the large hospitals in Dallas and Tarrant County are the tertiary referral centers for the surrounding communities and counties, any strains on the hospitals in Dallas and Fort Worth are of significant consequence to EVERYONE in the Metroplex and even beyond. Nearly all the hospitals in the DFW area are operating stress levels.
Because of the complexity and isolation needs to protect the staff, COVID hospitalizations regardless of the need for ICU care or not, put a strain on staffing and resources of a hospital. When 20% of a hospital's inpatients are COVID, they are considered "under stress". When 30% of a hospital's ICU census consists of COVID patients, that hospital is considered "under stress". Over the course of several weeks, operating at that level is unsustainable on staff and material resources.
See for yourself as NPR and the University of Minnesota have been tracking hospitalization data by county and hospital: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/12/09/944379919/new-data-reveal-which-hospitals-are-dangerously-full-is-yours
As many of you may know, our home school district, Lewisville ISD, has shut down for the rest of the week with plans for reopening next week. 20% of the teachers were out for COVID and the student cases were skyrocketing. But it's not like they weren't warned. I have reservations about the plans to continue with extra-curricular activities and competitions despite the shut down. Some of those activities will include gathering large numbers of people in indoor environments that are high risk in this Omicron surge.
Lewisville ISD students account for approximately 1/4 of the pediatric population of Denton County, so actions taken or not taken by LISD have a significant impact on the pandemic dynamics of the county as a whole. Absent new and proven measures at pandemic mitigation when the district reopens, we have to be open to the possibility of a double hump in cases- slowing and even a drop this week into the weekend, then increase again once the district opens absent any new mitigation measures.
There is a new Omicron sub-variant spreading in Europe designated BA.2. It has a number of mutations that are not present in the current Omicron variant. The clinical and epidemiological behavior of BA.2 is being characterized now, but from looking at the molecular biology of the new mutations it has, I am a bit concerned. We need to prepare the possibility of a spring surge driven by this new sub-variant. Of course we are hoping that that is not the case, but there's no substitute for preparation.
Something which the school districts have failed miserably at despite multiple warnings going back as far as this past summer.