Week 68's COVID-19 Report

Today's Covid-19 report covers June 28 through July 4th, Week 68. I will post the Vaccination Table and plots in the main part of the post. In the comment section, I will add a few articles about the Delta Variant.

With cases lining out across the state and slight increases in Hospitalizations, we could be in for some speculation regarding whether the Delta Variant has taken hold in Texas just like we are seeing in California. In particular, the states with the lowest vaccination rates all fall just to the east of our state line: Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Unfortunately, this week's Cases are not predictive since reporting around the holidays is spotty. This week, Harris County announced it will not longer post Weekend numbers. Similarly, around the state numbers will be artifically low and then high as results will come in batchwise. Such changes should be highlighted more by dashboards and news articles (see below on Urban per capita cases vs. % vaccinated, Collin County).

On the other hand, Hospitalization metrics are tabulated routinely. Here, numbers are sent to the State, electronically on a daily basis. Texas Hospitals have an excellent track record for sending in their data since one year ago when much of the present system was implemented. Here, we see the early signs of step increases in roughly half of the Trauma Service Areas (TSAs) which may or may not grow in the weeks to come. On the other side of the state, I am watching El Paso's Hospitalizations vs. Per Cent Vaccinated for the week when Cases plummet; however, they have instead reached a lower limit of 46 Covid-hospitalizations (weekly average; 8 per 100,000).

A similar limit is apparent in the other so-called "urban" counties above 55% vaccination rate. The counties with smaller population density at still trying to catch up with vaccination rates 10 to 15% lower.

Despite being the "elephant in the room", I have stopped posting Variant reports since the numbers do not change from week to week and it takes on the order of six weeks for them to show up on the DSHS file.