All Signs Point to Trouble in Covid Dodge
with Cases, Patients and Positivity Soaring

CDC Chief Warns of Rough Covid Winter

Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside
December 2, 2020

Texans are paying the price for the company of family and friends at the Thanksgiving table with almost 30,000 new coronavirus infections in the past two days in the Lone Star State where the testing positivity and hospitalization rates were higher on Wednesday than they'd been since midsummer.

The post-turkey day surge culminated in 14,758 new COVID-19 cases in Texas today when 14.35 percent of the tests here turned up positive - a level that's dramatically higher than the 10 percent standard that Governor Greg Abbott had used as a gauge for restrictions before switching to covid hospital patient counts this fall as a more lenient metric.

The Department of State Health Services reported there to be 9,109 people in Texas hospitals today with covid infections - the highest number in a single day since July 31. The state's official testing positivity rate was higher on Wednesday than it had been since August 2 after peaking 10 days earlier at nearly 11,000.

Lubbock was rated tonight as the seventh hottest spot in the nation by the New York Times after being among the most infected places in the U.S. throughout the past two months. The NYT had Lubbock and El Paso ranked fifth and sixth nationally in cumulative cases since the virus surfacing 10 months ago. Amarillo has sizzled as well with the country's 13th highest running tally of covid infections. The virus registered another record spike on Tuesday with 15,182 new infections reported by the DSHS.

But the virus had record spikes in the Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio areas this week while posting all-time highs in all the suburbs that lace the state's largest cities. Tarrant, Montgomery and McLennan counties had daily records fall on Tuesday before the virus hit high marks on Wednesday in Webb County on the border, Montgomery County on the northern edge of Houston and Guadalupe County on the northeastern outskirts of the Alamo City.

The disease that's held the world hostage for the past 10 months has featured three distinct personalities and varying levels of potency in the United States and Texas in particular. The initial assault of the spring was really just a warm-up for the summer surge that turned the cities up and down the Texas border into giant morgues,

While the current version has been the most contagious by far in Texas, it appears as though it may be a weaker dose than the summer batch with fewer fatalities and more treatment options for those who admitted to hospitals here with covid. But hospitals are still filling up at alarming rates and bracing for a winter covid patient crush in a state that appears to have given up on trying to control the virus with the focus now on keeping deaths and hospital overloads to a minimum.

The Centers for Disease Control warned on Wednesday that the winter wave will be the worst in terms of the potential for pushing the American health care system to the brink of collapse.

But the Texas governor doesn't plan to lock the state back down despite warnings from the federal agency, independent experts and the White House Coronavirus Task Force on the need for a more aggressive mitigation strategy in Texas to try to contain the disease until a vaccine is widely available several months from now.

more to come ...