Please read the below email sent by Dr. Roberta Schwartz on August 2, 2022:
All indicators show that this current surge of COVID-19 infections has stabilized! Across the TMC, hospital admissions have slowed, positivity rates are slowly declining, and the city of Houston wastewater viral load is decreasing. But because of the highly contagious B.A. 5 variant, we expect our numbers to remain stable—and not decrease significantly for a while. Today, we have 301 COVID-19 patients in our hospitals, and the number of employees with COVID-19 is also decreasing.
Our Houston Methodist sequencing team just reported that out of all positive COVID-19 tests in our system, 94% are BA.4 and 5. What this also means is there is a higher incidence of getting COVID-19 more than once. Because of the mutations, this reinfection is possible, but there is no doubt the vaccines continue to save lives. Here’s a news story about the possibility of reinfection, with quotes from Dr. Wesley Long. And some thoughts from Dr. Tony Fauci on new vaccines being developed to combat the variants. Keep doing everything you can to stay safe, and to keep our patients safe.
I also have some important resources to share with you on monkeypox. While numbers are still low, we should expect to see more cases in the near future. So far, there are 67 confirmed cases in Houston, and Houston Methodist has reported several (almost 100% outpatient). For an overview, here is an updated FAQ. See this comprehensive guide for more detailed clinical information. And here’s an interesting article from the Texas Tribune about communicating with college students about monkeypox as they are preparing to head back to school soon.
We have established in-house testing for monkeypox, and Friday we are opening a small monkeypox testing site at the JRB. Physicians can use Epic to refer patients to this site for testing rather than sending patients to the ED. There is no walk-in testing. If you have general questions about monkeypox, please feel free to call your hospital’s infection control.
Roberta L. Schwartz
Executive Vice President
Chief Innovation Officer
Houston Methodist Hospital
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