That’s when it looks like we’ll hit the peak of the pandemic here. And it could be ugly.
A surge in COVID-19 cases since Memorial Day could set the Houston area on track for a peak of 2,000 daily hospitalizations by mid-July, according to a model from a Baylor College of Medicine epidemiologist.
The region’s intensive care units would be overwhelmed by that number of patients, a nearly 50 percent increase from current levels, though thousands of general hospital beds remain available, said Dr. Chris Amos.
City of Houston Health Authority David Persse said several area hospitals already are at or over capacity, and warned that shifting patients to facilities in other cities, a common practice in natural disasters, may no longer be possible.
“The difference this time is the hurricane, if you will, is infecting the entire state,” Persse said.
With government restrictions on business and travel removed, the epidemiologist and hospital executives from the Texas Medical Center said the only hope for the Houston area to avoid that outcome is for residents to practice social distancing, wear masks and avoid unnecessary contact with others.
Too many residents, they said, appear to have mistaken the end of Harris County’s stay-at-home order as a cue to resume normal life, while the virus poses a greater threat today than it did on May 1.
“The alarming situation could be that we have rampant COVID spreading throughout our society,” Houston Methodist CEO Dr. Marc Boom said. “If we don’t take control, it takes control for us.”
See here for some background. Hey, remember that May projection from the PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia that was based on social distancing data? It suggested we would get up to over 2,000 hospitalizations per day, right around where we seem to be headed now. Their graph had us hitting that mark in early June, while Baylor is suggesting July. Never would have been much better than late, but here we are anyway.
Elected officials and their public health experts are grappling with the idea that Harris County may have squandered much of this spring’s success in slowing the growth of the virus during the six-week stay-home period.
The shutdown dealt severe damage to the economy, including half a million lost jobs. Since Gov. Greg Abbott began reopening the state in May, however, the Houston area has set new records for cases and hospitalizations.
“All of the good work that we did, shutting down, closing conferences and conventions … we’re wiping away the success that we collectively achieved, and the sacrifices that people made in March, April and in May,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said.
The mayor lamented that local officials have had little authority to issue restrictions since Abbott has implemented his phased reopening plan, and urged residents, at a minimum, to follow County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s mask order, which went into effect Monday. The order mandates that Harris County businesses require their customers to wear face coverings.
Abbott defended his strategy during a news conference in Austin, saying it achieved its primary goal of preventing hospitals from being overrun. He said the rate of new cases across the state was unacceptable, however.
See here for more on that mask order, which we could have had weeks ago had it not been for Abbott’s ridiculous, cowardly refusal to talk straight. This is all on you, Abbott. I hope the knowledge of your craven behavior haunts you for the rest of your days. I hope even more it’s what finally forces you out of office in 2022. May we all end up being overly panicked about this, because if not this is really going to suck. The Chron editorial board has more.
Seems that knucklehead Abbott thought that everything need to be bigger and better in Texas, even pandemic deaths.
Abbott is always “fixin’ to do something” which, of course, means he is going to do nothing about fixing anything.
Just wait for the uptick in cases that will come from the protests.