COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to quickly rise throughout the Rio Grande Valley, increasing by more than 65% in just a week and many individual hospitals seeing similar increases in the number of COVID patients treated within a seven-day period.
Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 are quickly reaching levels last seen in September that followed the rise in cases due to the spread of the delta variant. As the omicron variant is now thought to be the predominant variant among new cases, current COVID-19 hospitalizations are just under 500 througout the Valley.
As of Sunday, there were a total of 493 people hospitalized due to COVID-19, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services posted on Monday, which was more than a 65% increase from the 297 hospitalizations reported just a week prior.
Broken down by hospital, many facilities are seeing similar increases in the number of COVID-19 patients they treat per week.
Rio Grande Regional Hospital reported they had a total of 318 adult COVID patients during the week of Jan. 7, according to data reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The 318 patients admitted that week was an increase of nearly 79% from the 178 COVID-19 patients the hospital treated the previous week, the week of Dec. 31.
Mission Regional Medical Center had nearly as large an increase.
For the week of Jan. 7, the Mission hospital reported they had total of 269 COVID-19 patients during that seven-day period. It was a 75% increase from the 154 people that had been hospitalized there the previous week.
At DHR Health, there were a total of 289 people who were hospitalized the week of Jan. 7 which was a 57% increase from the 184 people hospitalized there for COVID-19 the previous week.
Also during the week of Jan. 7, a total of 13 pediatric patients were hospitalized at DHR which was down from the 14 reported the previous week.
Meanwhile, South Texas Health System reported smaller, though still notable, increases in the number of patients currently admitted for COVID-19.
The number of patients hospitalized at STHS McAllen, formerly known as McAllen Medical Center, is a 38% increase from COVID-19 patients hospitalized a week ago on Jan. 10, according to Tom Castañeda, the system director of marketing and public relations. At STHS Edinburg, formerly named Edinburg Regional Medical Center, and at their children’s hospital, their increase in current COVID hospitalizations was less than 10% compared to Jan. 10.
Currently, STHS has capacity at their acute care facilities to handle the influx of COVID and non-COVID patients, Castañeda wrote in an email.
“As with the rest of the healthcare industry across the U.S., our STHS facilities continue to be impacted by staff shortages, but we have been able to adjust schedules to handle the patient case load in our facilities,” Castañeda said.
“We continue to encourage all members of the community to follow the latest CDC guidelines, including wearing well-fitting masks and social distancing, to minimize the risk of spreading the virus to others,” he added. “We encourage everyone who is eligible to get vaccinated and boosted do so.”
