Valley virus hospitalizations increase by 70% in single week

There were seven new COVID-related deaths reported in the Rio Grande Valley on Tuesday and more than 600 new cases, with no signs of hospitalizations declining as numbers have increased substantially over the last week.

A Pharr woman in her 60s, two San Juan men over 70, and a 20-year-old man from an undisclosed location were the four Hidalgo County residents who reportedly died from complications due to COVID-19.

Their deaths raise the toll in Hidalgo County to 2,967 while the 442 new cases raise the total number of cases to 101,876. Of those, 63,952 were confirmed cases, 35,655 were probable and 2,269 were suspected.

There are currently 3,865 active cases in the county.

Cameron County health officials reported three additional COVID-related deaths — those of aBrownsville man in his 70s, a Harlingen man in his 80s, and a Laguna Vista man in his 80s — for a total number of 1,726.

They also reported 206 new cases on Tuesday for a total of 46,093.

COVID-19 hospitalizations throughout the Valley increased to 556 as of Monday, which is a nearly 70% increase from just a week ago when there were 328 hospitalizations on Aug. 2.

Just in Hidalgo County, hospitalizations were up to 379 people, the county reported Tuesday. Of those patients, 87 were being treated in intensive care units.

As variant cases of COVID-19 continue to grow, health officials advise that the best form of protection against serious illness is getting vaccinated.

“Right now, we are in a race against time to increase vaccination coverage before new variants emerge,” said Dr. Emilie Prot, regional medical director for the Texas Department of State Health Services, Public Health Region 11.

“What happens is when there’s someone who gets infected with COVID-19, the virus has the opportunity to mutate in a person’s body and it can evade some of the, either the vaccine, it can evade some of the new therapeutics that we have,” she said. “So all these things, we want to make sure that we prevent and we want to decrease the number of transmissions in our community before we have new variants emerge.”

“The good evidence that we have is our vaccines are safe and effective and they do provide protection against variants that are circulating in our community,” Prot added. “So right now, vaccination is the best way to protect yourself, your family, your community, those who you work with and high vaccination coverage will reduce the spread, so it will reduce the spread of any emerging new variants.”

She echoed what local officials have previously stated regarding the shortage of hospital staff available to care for patients.

“There hasn’t been an issue really of space, it’s mainly the staffed beds, so without staff there are beds that they cannot put patients in because there would be no one to take care of them and so, right now, it’s really an issue of staff,” Prot said.

“They’re trying to attract staff to their own facilities,” Prot said of hospitals. “It’s been difficult and I think people are just burnt out honestly, so I think it’s going to be very difficult with this surge coming up … the surge is actually taking off quicker than what we’ve seen last summer, and so that’s why I know the state is … we are concerned.”

On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he requested that hospitals voluntarily postpone elective medical procedures and that DSHS will be utilizing out-of-state staffing agencies to provide medical personnel to healthcare facilities in Texas to assist in COVID-19 operations.

Prot said it’s unclear how the state will be determining where to deploy that additional staff.

“Last time they were using that 15% COVID hospitalization rate across hospitals so right now obviously there’s a lot of different facilities that are above that number,” she said. “Some are in the 28% so that’s why he has halted elective surgeries.”

“Right now, the executive order just came out yesterday so I know we’ll hear more information today, but there will be a way to prioritize and to make sure that the needs are filled where the situation is more dire,” Prot said.