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Week 98: 1/24 - 1/30/2022

The Gulf Coast has topped out in cases. The Panhandle has more weekly fatalities (Week ending 12/26/2022 at 71) than Central Texas (54) and Gulf Coast (66). Webb, Starr, and Maverick Counties are well above 90% eligible fully vaccinated.


Central Texas Hospitalizations climb due to increases in Bexar County. The number of TSA's with five or fewer available ICU's has held constant over the last 3-4 weeks.


How to put this together into a message that holds together? Is Omicron "milder" than Delta or not? Many in the public want a sound byte, something like: "Give it a rest!" , but there is always more. For week 28, I will compare the Border with Vermont which has the Nation's highest vaccination rates at 79% of total population. No mention of the Stealth Omicron, I promise.


Vaccination Table Figure 1 shows lackluster gains from all regions except for the Border whose rates of vaccination continue to climb. Many counties exceeded 1% in their weekly turnout for shots. This compares with .3 to .4% elsewhere.



Vermont has led the country in the % total population getting vaccines. Granted, it is a small state - just 3k sq-m larger than Israel; however, with 600k population, she looks more like the Panhandle. Texas's US, Mexican border spans more than 800 miles and is the home to 3.1M people. So, it is no small accomplishment that they have achieved 80% vaccinated of those eligible, 80*2.5/3.1 or 64.1% of the total population (including those under 5).


Despite these results, Vermont has seen peak hospitalizations attributed to the need for boosters. Nevertheless, her hospitalizations come in at 16 Covid-19 patients per 100k, varying between 8 and 30. Week 98's Border Covid-19 patients were at 42, similar to the Gulf Coast which has fallen from 40 to 38 over the last 3 weeks. Why such different results? Is it because Vermont has a larger 65+ fraction (Vermont: 65+ at 20% total in 2020 census vs. Border 11%) or a smaller 5- (Vermont: 5- at 4.7% vs. Border 19.5%).


The hypothesis, to be checked over the next month is that the Border children less than 5-years old are at risk without vaccinations. There are a larger fraction of these in their total population than Vermont. Alternative hypotheses are related to Health Care Coverage (Border<Vermont) , the prevalence of existing medical conditions (Border>Vermont), fraction with boosters (19.5% Border vs. 56.3% Vermont).


Weekly Avg Hospitalizations overlaid with Fatalities per Week Figure 2. With Hospitalizations close to their peak, the trend going forward will depend on Fatalities vs. Cases. This week, we will look at how Fatalities have increased since the Winter holidays.



All five regions report Hospitalizations that are close to those obtained one year ago, at the end of January (see Red Vertical arrows and Blue Bars). For the most part, last Winter's surge defined Texas's hospital capacity. With the TSA's working together to manage their patient populations and limits in ICU resources, patients were transported from regions where beds were limited (rural hospitals) to regions where there was available capacity (Houston-TSAQ; Dallas/Ft Worth-TSAE).


Since fatalities are not officially reported until Medical Examiners complete a Death Certificate, there is a delay corresponding to the actual date and the date all deaths for a given date are reported. Therefore, the Fatalities are only shown through the week ending at 12/26/21. We will be interested to see whether, at peak hospitalization, how 2022 January fatalities compare with 2021. This comparison will be affected by: Vaccination Rates, Omicron vs. Alpha, and a fully open Economy vs. Phase 4 with Mask Mandates.


Read This!


The NYTimes has the best discussion of Variants to date. The time series data and illustrations will no doubt inspire LEGO models in the coming semester. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/health/coronavirus-variant-tracker.html


To demonstrate that Omicron is not necessarily "milder", a fully vaccinated (with booster) Killeen, Texas teacher (27 years-old) was diagnosed with a punctured lung, a Covid-19 complication - five days after having a baby. Her story is heartbreaking and makes me wonder whether her she or her son had been exposed to unmasked students during November when Omicron came to the state. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/health/omicron-chronic-illness.html



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