TEXAS HOSPITALIZATION DATA
For school districts to not do their part in this Omicron wave is an extraordinary failure in citizenship and moral leadership.
I had posted last week that a milder COVID variant that's more contagious is a greater threat to the health care system. What I’ve done here is taken the Texas COVID hospitalization data since the start of data collection on hospitalizations in the summer of 2020.
I’ve marked out each of the peaks of the COVID surges that we have had since then and noted the prevalence of hospitalization per 100,000 people. That is NOT who gets hospitalized for COVID out of those with infected, but the prevalence of COVID hospitalization for everyone in Texas, infected or not.
So if you look at the Alpha surge, where I have 6.5/100K, that means for every 100,000 residents in Texas, infected or not, 6.5 people were hospitalized that day.
Next to each high water mark of the COVID waves, I have also calculated what that prevalence means in terms of the population of Texas, the DFW Metroplex, and Denton County. Again, if we look at the peak of the Alpha wave, on that day there were 6.5 COVID hospitalizations per 100,000 people in Texas. For all of Texas, that translates into 1885 people with COVID hospitalized across Texas on that single day. For the DFW Metroplex, that translates to 455 people with COVID hospitalized in the Metroplex that day. And for Denton County, 6.5/100K means 59 people in the county were hospitalized for COVID on that day.
I've done this for each of the four major waves for which we have hospitalization data. We did not have hospitalization data in Texas during the initial COVID surge in March-April 2020.
The summer of 2020 was the first major variant which back then we called D614G. It was a mutation in the viral spike that stabilized it in a particular configuration that made it more efficient at infecting people.
Winter 2020-2021 was the Alpha surge. The Alpha variant had one particular mutation designated N501Y that increased its ability to bind with the host ACE2 receptor in our lungs, increasing its infectivity and ability to get transmitted to others.
Late summer 2021 was the Delta surge that was magnified with school districts across Texas starting without any serious pandemic mitigation protocols based on medical best practices. Fortunately, the vaccines had rolled out already towards the end of the Alpha wave and without those vaccines, the Delta surge in Texas would have been significantly worse than the Alpha surge. It came close to matching the levels of hospitalization that we saw with Alpha, which was highly worrisome given that we had vaccines readily available by the time of the arrival of the Delta wave in Texas.
You can clearly see how the Omicron trajectory on Texas hospitalizations is steeper and increasing much more quickly than our prior waves. As of two days ago, the hospitalization prevalence in Texas was 6.8 per 100,000 people.
Again, that's not 6.8 per 100,000 infected. That's 6.8 per 100,000 of EVERYONE.
Over on the far left, I have listed current open beds, both hospital and ICU beds, for Texas, the DFW Metroplex, and Denton County.
The last data point on the data plot is from two days ago.
For Denton County, 6.8/100K means that two days ago, we had about 61 COVID hospitalizations in the county. As of today, we have 104 open hospital beds in the county and only 6 open ICU beds in our county.
For the DFW Metroplex, 6.8/100K means that two days ago, 476 people with COVID were hospitalized across the Metroplex. As of today, there are 1188 open hospital beds and 105 open ICU beds across the DFW area. How long do you think that will last if nearly 500 people are getting hospitalized each day?
For the entire State of Texas, 6.8/100K means that two days ago, 1972 people were hospitalized for COVID across the state. As of today, there are 7911 open hospital beds in all of Texas and only 396 open ICU beds in the entire state. How long do you think that will last with nearly 2000 people a day are getting hospitalized across Texas for COVID?
Even though pediatric hospitalizations for COVID are rising to all-time highs, it is true that the rate of hospitalization among children with COVID is less than it is with adults. But our schools, absent the use of best medical practices in pandemic mitigation, are the largest congregate gatherings each day in every community across Texas.
For every student in a Texas school district, they have a parent or family member who more than likely has at least one major risk factor for serious COVID infection that can land them in the hospital or worse. Approximately 60-65% of American adults have at least one major risk factor for serious COVID disease, particularly if they are unvaccinated. That means the majority of children in Texas schools have at least one parent who is vulnerable, particularly if they are unvaccinated.
We are getting early indications of a post-COVID encephalopathy that affects children about 2-3 weeks after even mild infection. This is a distinct condition from the very serious MIS-C (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children) that occurs about 4-6 weeks after COVID infection. This new post-COVID encephalopathy impacts the brains of children and we are desperately trying to gather data on this condition that appears to be unique to the Omicron variant.
Children stricken with this new condition do not have respiratory symptoms. They present with classic symptoms of encephalitis/encephalopathy with headaches, seizures, ataxia, confusion, motor weakness, and/or nystagmus. They usually have normal head imaging.
Focusing on the impacts of COVID being "mild" in kids fails miserably at recognizing that each child is a part of a family and each family is part of a community. For school districts to not do their part in this Omicron wave is an extraordinary failure in citizenship and moral leadership.