A spokesperson for Houston Methodist said Monday there is an “alarming spike in the number of COVID-19 cases across the Houston area, with the steepest increase happening over the weekend.”
Most of the new cases continue to be the Delta variant, although they have now seen their first Lambda variant as well.
“The increased hospitalizations add stress to many of our hospitals that are nearing capacity,” stated Houston Methodist in a press release. “A week ago today, Houston Methodist had a little over 100 COVID-19 patients across our hospital system. Today we have more than 185 COVID-19 patients.”
Dr. Marc Boom said it is imperative “we, as a community, step up our vigilance and impress upon people to get vaccinated and decrease virus spread.”
Similarly, Memorial Hermann last week reported a 50% increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations as almost every county in the area is seeing an increase in new cases. KHOU 11 analyzed health department data and found daily new cases in the Greater Houston area have jumped about 65% in the last two weeks. The seven-day moving average, as of July 15th, was 588 new cases a day.
More than 159 million people in the Unites States have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to CDC data released on July 12.
During the same period, the agency reported 5,492 patients nationwide with COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections had been hospitalized or died. According to the CDC, 75% of those patients were 65 or older and 19% of those cases resulted in death.
