Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo lowered Harris County’s COVID-19 threat level to “significant” Thursday, signaling the city is emerging from the worst of the omicron wave as infection rates plummet.
Harris County has met all four metrics needed to lower its threat level from red, its highest level indicating “severe risk,” to orange, the second-highest possible threat level. Under orange, officials still recommend that residents minimize all unnecessary contact and avoid large gatherings to stem the spread of the virus.
“The omicron wave hit Harris County very, very hard,” Hidalgo said in a statement. “In fact, only now have our hospitalization rates dropped to levels that don’t immediately threaten the capacity of our healthcare system.”
[…]
The two other metrics that were keeping the county in red — ICU capacity and new cases per 100,000 — have improved in recent days, leading to the downgrade Thursday. The overall percentage of COVID patients in the ICU fell to the county’s threshold of 15 percent, and the seven-day rate of new cases per 100,000 people declined to 83, well below the county’s goal of 100.
Hidalgo encouraged residents to get vaccinated to avoid another “dangerous” COVID spike.
“While we’re moving in the right direction, there are no guarantees we won’t see another wave in the future,” Hidalgo said.
We were last at orange in December, on the way to red a couple of weeks later. At this rate, we’ll likely be back to yellow soon, and after that who knows. The good news is that between our vaccination level and the sheer number of people who contracted omicron, our overall immunity level for the short term is as good as it’s ever been. The bad news is that our vax level is still way too low, far too few kids have been vaxxed, and the waning omicron wave is causing fewer people to get vaxxed now because the threat is receding. It really is just a matter of time before we’re back in a crisis situation again. If we’re lucky, and we make a strong effort to get a lot more people vaccinated in countries that have not had nearly enough vaccine supply, then maybe that next wave is farther off. If not, well, I probably don’t have to tell you what that means. Stace has more.