COVID-19 hospitalizations in the Rio Grande Valley jumped this week, placing hospitalization levels slightly higher than they were at the same time last year.
As of Tuesday, there were 105 people hospitalized with COVID-19 throughout the Valley, a 33% hike from the previous day when there were a total of 79 patients.
The increase in COVID hospitalizations is a continuation of the upward trend that began in November.
This time last year, there were 89 COVID hospitalizations in the Valley which was on par with the hospitalization levels at that time.
Hospitalizations in December 2021 didn’t start increasing until more than a week later, on Dec. 28, when they hit a total of 104 patients.
After that, hospitalizations kept increasing for weeks, reaching 656 COVID hospitalizations on Jan. 26.
Of the 105 COVID patients reported Tuesday, 83 were adults and four were pediatric patients. Of the adults, 18 were in intensive care units.
The 105 COVID hospitalizations make up 4.61% of all hospitalizations in the Valley.
In Hidalgo County, health officials reported 50 COVID hospitalizations Tuesday which included 48 adults, of which nine were in the ICU, and two pediatric patients.
This week, the county also reported 487 new cases including 211 confirmed and 276 probable cases.
This brings the annual total, so far, to 125,963 COVID cases which far outpaces the cases reported during the first two years of the pandemic.
In 2020, Hidalgo County reported a total of 52,107 COVID cases while in 2021, the county reported 72,092 COVID cases.
But as the total number of COVID cases went up each year, the total number of deaths attributed to COVID significantly declined simultaneously.
This year, the county has reported a total of 519 deaths due to COVID-related complications.
During the first year of the pandemic, in 2020, the county reported the most with 2,208 COVID deaths. That went down in 2021 when the county reported 1,323 COVID deaths.
In Cameron County, there have been a total of 2,315 COVID-related deaths since the start of the pandemic, though it’s unclear in which years those deaths occurred.
One of those deaths was reported earlier this week.
On Thursday, Cameron County health officials reported one of their residents, who was fully vaccinated against COVID, died due to COVID-related complications. Officials did not include further details about the deceased individual.
Also this week, Cameron County reported 517 new cases including 206 confirmed, 307 probable, and four self-reported COVID cases.
The county has now had a total of 130,871 total cases since the start of the pandemic.
