AUSTIN, Texas — Austin-Travis County health officials are urgently reminding residents that the area remains in a COVID-19 surge status, but they are cautiously optimistic as some metrics appear to be improving.
During a COVID-19 briefing Tuesday morning, Medical Director Dr. Desmar Walkes said that looking at the curve Austin Public Health (APH) has been monitoring over the last 18 months, cases are starting to decline and the positivity rate also appears to be going down.
"We're not sure whether that is because we're seeing a decrease in the number of positive cases truly or if some people are starting to use more of the antigen testing because when we report these test numbers, we're looking at the PCR test, the confirmatory test numbers. But, overall, it looks as though this is holding true," Walkes said.
Walkes also said that APH has received reports from the University of Texas that they have been doing large amounts of testing and positivity rates also appear to be going down on campus.
The 7-day moving average for new hospitalizations in Austin-Travis County is also down to 52. The threshold for Stage 5 of the area's COVID-19 risk-based guidelines is a 7-day average of 50 to 90 new hospital admissions, depending on the rate of increase.
Walkes also noted that school cases seem to have gone down over the past week. Last week, she had expressed uncertainty about whether the number had decreased because it was a short school week due to the Labor Day holiday. But the decrease has remained consistent.
"Again, this week, we're down to 659 cases – 499 student cases, 77 staff cases," Walkes said. "Masking has been employed in different ways, different school districts. We are now seeing a deployment of testing resources from the Texas Education Association agency. So, that's going to be used by our local school districts and they will be able to monitor their students and staff in a much more robust way."
Walkes said APH is talking with local school districts about how to deploy those tests and more information will be available about that in the coming weeks.
The numbers aren't all on the decline, however. Walkes said the area is seeing an increase in hospital admissions for the 30 to 49 age group, though there is a slow degree decrease in the number of cases. She also noted that there is still some concern with the number of pediatric hospital admissions during this surge, which she attributes mostly to inconsistent masking in schools and the fact that children under 12 are still ineligible for vaccines.
"Currently, we have 12 pediatrics admissions in our hospital systems, two in ICU, two on ventilators. None of the pediatric cases that are admitted currently are vaccinated," Wilkes said.
Meanwhile, vaccines appear to be making a major impact on how the delta variant is affecting the senior population in Austin-Travis County.
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"They are not being as impacted by this delta variant. You see that they were at 35% in the 70-plus age group for hospitalizations and ICU admissions and that's dropped down into the 20s," Walkes said, adding, "However, there's been a significant increase in the impact that's been seen in the age group of 30 to 49, which is increased from 19% to 30% for hospitalizations and 17% to 29% for ICU admissions."
Overall, Walkes and other local health officials are pleased that Travis County has reached the milestone where 70% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated.
"Vaccinations have had a good impact to protect our senior citizens and also have helped our community overall. And our vaccine teams from all sections of our community have done an amazing job of getting us to the 70% fully vaccinated mark," Walkes said.
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