Dr. Mark Escott, interim Austin-Travis County health authority, warned Travis County commissioners during a weekly meeting Tuesday that hospitals were just 10 people away from reaching the 200 person limit for coronavirus patients in intensive care units.
Escott said area hospitals reported a record of 117 new coronavirus hospitalizations on Tuesday, for a total of 601 active hospitalizations.
Of those total hospitalizations, 190 patients were in the ICU and 104 were on ventilators, according to Escott. This situation is far from over and more likely to get worse than better in the short term, Escott said.
In a statement Tuesday afternoon, the area s three health care networks Ascension Seton, Baylor Scott & White Health and St. David’s HealthCare said 75% of the 2,473 staffed beds within their systems and 91% of their 483 ICU beds are occupied.
Bell County registered a single-day COVID-19 case increase of 232 on Tuesday, as active infections spiked to 2,441, a local health official said.
âToday we have 14,019 total cases with 11,578 recoveries ⦠672.6 per 100,000 people is our current incidence rate,â Bell County Public Health District Director Amanda Robison-Chadwell said.
Robison-Chadwell has previously emphasized how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers a region with an incidence rate of over 200 to be in a âred zone.â
Bell Countyâs last COVID-19 related fatality was announced on Thursday when the Bell County Public Health District received a death certificate for a woman in her 80s from Temple.
Thursday marked the tenth day in a row that the Deep East Texas Trauma Service Area, which includes Angelina and Nacogdoches counties, had a hospitalization rate that was above 15 percent of its total capacity.