It’s been five years since the height of the pandemic, but COVID-19 is far from gone. Downgraded to an endemic from a pandemic, the virus surges seasonally, peaking at the tail end of every summer for the last five years straight. According to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Texas is one of the 24 states with a growing rate of COVID-19 cases, and Dallas County classifies the current risk of transmission as higher than normal for fully vaccinated individuals.
Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 6 of this year, there have been 3,688 confirmed COVID-19 cases and a single fatality in Dallas County. In the same time frame in 2022, there were 147,413 confirmed cases and 837 deaths. So, even though reported cases are growing in Texas, especially, we are not facing anything close to the levels witnessed during the height of the pandemic, said Dr. Philip Huang, director of Dallas Health and Human Services.
“It’s a concern,” said Dr. Huang. “It’s not as bad as it’s been in the past, but we definitely need to be vigilant about it, and especially patients that are at higher risk; older adults, immunocompromised people and infants. We’re also monitoring all the different variants. Some of the latest variants seem to be spreading very easily… But we’re not in the same place we were at the beginning of this. We have the tools and the vaccines still offer really good protection against severe disease.”…