COVID hospitalizations at a low in the state

Good news (say it with me) for now.

Texas hospitals are treating fewer than 1,000 patients with COVID-19 for the first time in two years. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, hospitalizations totaled 993 on Sunday. The last time COVID-19 patients in Texas numbered less than a thousand was April 4, 2020, before the state’s initial surge in hospitalizations, which rose to nearly 11,000 by late July that year.

“Less than a thousand [hospitalizations] is a good place to be and this is what we’ve kind of been waiting for and watching really closely,” said Chief State Epidemiologist Dr. Jennifer Shuford.

Fewer people are getting severely ill and needing medical care, said Dr. Shuford, because nearly the entire Texas population has now developed at least some immune response to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

“We expect, based on some antibody studies that we’ve done, that about 99% of our population has some antibodies to COVID-19, either from vaccination or from prior infection.”

Other infectious disease experts are also cautiously optimistic that vaccinations, combined with four waves of widespread infections – the most recent of which was driven by the omicron variant – will help minimize future surges in cases and hospitalizations.

“I do think that the antibody seroprevalence does have something to do with the declining severity of the illness that we’re seeing in terms of decreased hospitalizations,” said Dr. Robert Atmar, an infectious disease expert who teaches at Baylor College of Medicine.

Dr. Atmar said while he was not aware of how DSHS estimated Texas’ overall immune response, the high rate is possible, especially if infection rates for the virus have been under reported.

“It wouldn’t be surprising if a large percentage of the population had been infected and/or vaccinated. 99% just seems high, but it’s certainly not unreasonable that that might be the case,” he said.

I’m just some guy on the Internet, and I also think 99% is a little high. I do agree that between our mediocre vaccination rate and our undoubtedly high infection rate that a lot of people have at least some immunity at this point, and that is keeping the rate low for now. To some extent, as I understand it, this is how a pandemic becomes endemic – there’s enough residual immunity out there to keep infection rates modest and generally tamp down on larger outbreaks. But that surely comes with no guarantees, and the next bad mutation could happen at any time. If we’re lucky, that will either be relatively mild or be mostly stopped by vaccinations, but at this point who knows what could happen. I’ll be getting booster #2 in the near future, and you should be getting whichever booster you can if you haven’t already. It’s still your best bet.

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