As cases of the omicron variant continue to spread, state health officials expect cases to continue to rise for the next couple of weeks before possibly leveling off.
Trends seen near the city of Houston indicate that COVID-19 cases there have possibly plateaued, leading health officials to believe that might also occur in the Rio Grande Valley within a few weeks.
“Right now, we’re still continuing to see the increase in cases across our region, across Texas,” said Dr. Emilie Prot, regional medical director for Public Health Region 11, an office of the Texas Department of State Health Services.
“I have spoken to a few colleagues over in the Houston area, they’re starting to see a slowdown and possible plateau of their number of cases and hospitalizations, and usually we’re about two weeks behind,” Prot said, “so we’re going to continue to see an increase at least for the next couple weeks in Region 11.”
Region 11 is comprised of 19 counties in South Texas which includes the Valley, and cases in the region have consistently increased over the last three weeks, according to Mauro Ruiz, Region 11’s communicable disease manager.
“For the last seven days, we’ve had a seven-day increase of 2,582 confirmed cases,” Ruiz said of the entire region. “That means that we’ve had three weeks of consistent increases in our confirmed cases.”
He added the region was seeing about 369 confirmed cases per day and about 188 probable cases per day.
“As far as our total confirmed cases, that means that we’ve had an 8% increase in confirmed cases and a 6.14% increase in probable cases,” Ruiz said. “Our total deaths for public health Region 11 as of Jan. 17 is 8,688.”
In Hidalgo County, there were a total of 13 COVID-19 related deaths reported Thursday, nine of whom were not vaccinated.
Their deaths raised the total number of COVID deaths in the county to 3,573.
The county also reported 119 new cases including 60 confirmed and 59 probable cases.
There are now a total of 128,297 recorded cases in Hidalgo County since the start of the pandemic. Those include 73,771 confirmed, 51,330 probable and 3,196 suspected cases.
On Thursday, there were also 164 new cases among school staff and 726 new cases among students for a total of 2,073 total school staff members and 7,277 students who have tested positive since the beginning of the school year in August 2021.
Throughout the entire Valley, there were 589 COVID-19 hospitalizations on Wednesday, according to DSHS data posted on Thursday. That is 200 more than, and a 53% increase from, the people hospitalized just five days prior on Friday when there were 384 COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Hospitalizations in the Valley now make up well above 15% of total hospital capacity.
From Jan. 12 through Jan. 18, that percentage rose from 11.51% to 21.64%, according to Ruiz.
“Staffing continues to be a challenge for many of these hospitals and a lot of staff,” Ruiz said, adding that the increase in patients and staff taking leave due to testing positive for COVID has only made sustaining their work more challenging.
In Hidalgo County alone, there were 409 people hospitalized due to COVID-19, county officials reported Thursday, which was up from the 380 reported Wednesday. Those hospitalized included 370 adults and 39 pediatric patients.
The 409 patients also included 80 people receiving treatment in intensive care units, 71 being adults and nine pediatric patients.
Most of the cases spreading throughout the region are believed to be of the omicron variant, which Ruiz said represents about 90-95% of all cases that are sequenced. About 3% of cases come back as the delta variant.
“Right now, omicron is continuing to spread, continuing to spread rapidly through Texas,” Prot said. “It’s straining our hospital capacity but also businesses and with the number of people that are sick and out due to positive testing.”
She reiterated the recommendation to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to have some form of protection.
“Right now, the best protection is still the vaccine,” she said. “The majority of the hospitalizations that we’re seeing in this surge are unvaccinated individuals in Texas.”
