More people are testing positive for COVID-19 and more people are being hospitalized because of it throughout the Rio Grande Valley, but whether the numbers could rise to the levels seen last summer when hospital beds were scarce is still too early to tell.
There were more than 300 new cases reported Wednesday, and hospitalizations in Hidalgo County again climbed to 162, with 40 patients being treated in intensive care units.
State health officials who are monitoring the situation predict that the number can continue to increase but don’t know at this point whether it will likely rise to the peak numbers that the Valley saw last July, according to Dr. Emilie Prot, regional medical director for Public Health Region 11.
“Right now, the number is still lower for the rate of COVID that are hospitalized, but it has caught everyone’s attention and of course CDC’s attention so we are watching it very closely,” Prot said. “But it’s too early to necessarily say if we’re going to be going down the same path, and that’s why we’re really trying to make sure that people know what to do.”
Prot spoke about the current COVID-19 situation during a news conference held Wednesday alongside Starr County officials. She reported that while there had not been any variant cases discovered within the county as of June, this month there were two confirmed variant cases, both of which were of the Delta variant.
The cases were community-acquired, according to Prot, because the two individuals hadn’t recently traveled.
At Starr County Memorial Hospital, where there were currently three patients admitted for COVID-19, staff tested 87 patients who displayed COVID-19 symptoms from July 19 through July 27, according to Thalia Muñoz, hospital president and administrator.
Of those 87 patients, 38 tested positive.
“We’re seeing more and more patients with symptoms in the ER,” Muñoz said, noting that the hospital opened up more beds Wednesday morning because of decreasing availability elsewhere. “The availability of beds in the Valley are close to nothing right now, or everybody’s having an influx of patients, and that’s our understanding. So it’s getting hard to transfer patients out again.”
Munoz pointed out that a lot of the patients are sent home because their symptoms can be managed with outpatient care, but, nevertheless, more people were coming in with symptoms and more people were testing positive.
“So again we really, really have to be conscientious,” Muñoz said.
There were three COVID-19 related deaths in Hidalgo County and 323 new cases reported on Wednesday for a total case count of 97,445. Of those, 62,462 were confirmed cases, 32,716 were probable and 2,267 were suspected.
Hidalgo County had 2,264 active cases as of Wednesday.
Starr County reported 13 new probable cases, while Willacy County reported three confirmed cases, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
As cases continue to trend upward, Prot again advised individuals to get fully vaccinated.
“COVID’s not going away, and so we must learn how to protect ourselves, protect our families, and we do have the tool with vaccines,” Prot said.
The message that Starr County Judge Eloy Vera hoped to get across to the public was the necessity of practicing safety protocols, such as the use of face coverings and social distancing, but he also pressed the importance of getting vaccinated.
“We have the tools to prevent an outbreak and that’s the vaccine,” Vera said. “I just cannot understand humanity at times. We have the tool; my understanding is that a high 90%, 97-98%, of the people that have died recently have not been vaccinated.”
“Numbers do not lie,” Vera continued. “If the people that are vaccinated are not dying, then by all means, I don’t know why people are still reluctant to get the vaccine.”
Ultimately, the decision to get vaccinated is a personal one, Vera said.
“But I cannot over stress how important that is to get vaccinated,” he said. “Especially the age group between 12 and 30-35, that’s where we’re having the major problems. So we encourage you to please do that.”
