HOUSTON — Less than three months after it announced that it would no longer provide an updated, weekly snapshot of COVID-19 in the region, the Texas Medical Center announced Tuesday that not only is it relaunching the website, but it’s adding additional data.
The president and CEO of the world’s largest medical complex announced the decision to relaunch the online dashboard was made as positive COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to rise.
During a virtual press conference, President and CEO of Baylor College of Medicine Dr. Paul Klotman explained that the latest subvariants of the omicron variant of COVID-19, BA.4 and BA.5, now account for the majority of infections in the U.S. Both subvariants, Klotman said, are highly contagious.
"You could almost call this a stealth surge, or peak. We’re at the same level of virus and peak level of virus now as we were in January with omicron,” Klotman said.
The White House reports more than 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated. Klotman said BA.4 and BA.5 have spike proteins that are able to evade a person’s immunity to COVID -- created either through previous infection or a vaccine.
“It’s still a very dangerous virus and hospitalizations are rising,” he said.
Because the virus is highly contagious, the Texas Medical Center is now including the weekly results of wastewater testing done by the City of Houston. It more accurately measures COVID-19 in the community.
“The idea here is that as we’ve moved into a lot of at-home testing, there’s a significant amount of testing positivity that doesn’t get reported,” COO of the Texas Medical Center Isaac Middleton said. “The testing in the wastewater in Houston indicates the amount of positive viral load in the community.”
Updated every Tuesday, this week's data shows Houston’s positivity rate is 29%.
The symptoms of BA.4 and BA.5 include a pounding headache and lingering cough, said Klotman who confirms a majority of people infected with COVID-19 no longer lose their sense of taste or smell.
“This virus tends to infect the upper airways more,” he said.
The CDC is looking at the possibility of suggesting a second booster shot for healthy adults under the age of 50. Klotman said an updated vaccine, one that can fight off omicron and its subvariants, is what’s really needed.
“Now, in the history of vaccines, first generation vaccines save a lot of people but they’re usually not the best vaccine,” Klotman said. “What we need is a better vaccine strategy,” and for the temperature to drop.
Doctors think rising temperatures across Texas, which force people to stay indoors, also contribute to summer spikes during this pandemic.
“It’s definitely a problem. And it might be contributing to the big surge that we’re seeing in the south right now,” he said.