Hospitalizations
There are many angles to hospitalizations. And I’ll try to show you a comprehensive picture. Each of these graphs tells a slightly different story. This data is up to date as of June 25 at 4:00PM.
Figure 1 & 2: Number of COVID19 hospitalizations over time. These two figures basically show the same thing: an increase since June 1. Overall, Texas has had a 62% increase in COVID19 hospitalizations since June 1. This increase, though, vastly ranges across regions (Figure 2). There are some TSA regions (Corpus Christi, Rio Grande Valley, Waco, San Antonio) that have a higher than 80% increase in the past 25 days. This means COVID19 is spreading FAST in these areas.
Figure 3: Number of COVID19 hospitalizations on June 25 after taking into account population. This is important because it may look like some places are increasing but may not be too concerning considering their population. Once we control for population, Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio have a lot of very sick people in their population. Houston has now come in the mix. This means there are a lot of very sick people in Houston, but it’s not increasing at the rate of Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio. You can see Waco and Corpus Christi are at the other end of the spectrum now. This means that while COVID19 is spreading at a high rate, the rate of sick people isn’t as worrisome after controlling for their population.
Figure 4: Capacity. There are now 5 areas over 80% capacity: Dallas, Houston, Galveston, Rio Grande, and Corpus Christi. This IS accounting for hospitals ALREADY increasing capacity by opening surge units. Halting elective surgeries will also help.
Translation: We should be most concerned about Rio Grande Valley- COVID19 is spreading FAST, they have very sick people in relation to their population, and are close to full capacity in hospitals. I would also be very worried about these hospital capacities, which has the gravest implications.
Love, your local epidemiologist
Data source: DSHS. Graphs and analyses by yours truly.