Week 56's COVID-19 Report

This is the report for Week 56, April 5 - April 11. There have been reports of "Red Counties" in the Panhandle; cases are up over the past week, but these have not translated into higher hospitalizations. Also, North Texas saw its first increase in cases since the end of February. Both results come on the same day that Governor Abbot is reported to have claimed that Texas has reached herd immunity.

The Vaccination Table corrects an indexing mistake from last week. According to the new results, the Gulf Coast comes out in the middle of the pack at 25.6% completely vaccinated ranging from 23.1% (Central Texas) to 32.3% (Border). If we assume that Herd Immunity is somewhere above 60%, then we still have 60-26 = 34% more to go. At a rate of 2% per week, this means 17 more weeks more to go, or 4 more months. Note that 60% is a generous estimate. People with more experience than me say this limit is above 80%.

Finally, no progress on assigning the 577 Pending Variants to a County. This is unfortunate since this value is greater than the number attributed to Gulf Coast Counties, the largest concentration in the state.