DALLAS — Hospitals in Texas are suspending elective procedures and turning to 2,500 medical workers from other states to help combat a new surge in Covid-19 cases as increasingly younger and healthier patients who didn’t get vaccinated against the virus crowd treatment floors.
The state is bracing for what could be its most aggressive fight against the coronavirus yet as the delta variant rips across the country and hits states with low vaccination rates and relaxed public health measures in the South and Midwest particularly hard.
Covid cases in the Lone Star state have exploded in the last few weeks. Texas is averaging about 15,419 new cases per day, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University as of Wednesday, up 34% from a week ago and more than double the seven-day average of 6,762 just two weeks ago.
“What’s concerning about the trajectory is that we’re seeing a much more rapid increase in the number of cases,” Dr. Trish Perl, chief of infectious diseases at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told CNBC.
“We are seeing unvaccinated people that are younger as opposed to earlier in the pandemic when we saw a lot of hospitalizations over 65. Now, the largest and the highest increases that we’re seeing are the 18 to 49-year-olds and a lot of these people don’t have underlying illnesses,” Perl said.
The surge in cases comes as Abbott wages war against local school and government officials who have reinstituted mask mandates, threatening $1,000 fines against municipalities and officials who defy him. He first banned local mask mandates in an executive order on May 18, following that up with a second order July 29 levying fines against any county, city, school district, health agency, or government official who disobey his directive.
Abbott’s July order also prohibited all public and private entities, government agencies, from requiring individuals to get vaccinated or submit proof of vaccination.
Local officials across Texas are defying state leaders, turning to the courts to challenge Abbott.
