June 21, 2021

COVID-19 Update: This Week’s Numbers

Good morning. Hope your air conditioning is working and that you had a wonderful Father’s Day weekend as the world continues to get slowly back to normal. This week there is continued good news from around the world. Despite some hot spots, the global death toll has diminished. Locally, there continues to be a disturbing number of hospitalizations and deaths as the virus moves through the ranks of those unvaccinated and previously uninfected.

El Paso Data

Average Daily New Cases: 15 (12 one week ago and 21 two weeks ago)

Average Daily Hospitalized Patients: 42 (50 one week ago and 65 two weeks ago)—(3% of Total Beds / 7% of Available Beds)

Average Daily ICU Patients: 18 (19 one week ago and 24 two weeks ago)—(8% of Total Beds / 23% of Available Beds)

Known Active Cases: 280 (444 one week and 626 two weeks ago)

Weekly Mortality

El Paso: 7 (5 last week)

Texas: 187 (214 last week)

US: 2,056 (2,138 last week)

Global: 62,429 (74,706 last week)

At this time, we continue to advise extreme caution until you and your contacts are vaccinated

For the 8 out of the past 13 weeks, US average daily cases have decreased. After climbing last week, US average daily cases resumed their previous decline, with an 11% decrease to 11,138 (compared with 14,288 over the previous 14 days). Daily cases in El Paso increased 26% to 15 per day but remain low (12 per day last week). Locally, daily cases have decreased 15 out of the past 20 weeks.

This past week El Paso has again seen an improvement in hospitalizations. This week the average number of hospitalized patients in El Paso decreased 17% (29% decrease last week). Average ICU patients decreased 7% (25% decrease last week). Overall hospitalizations have improved 19 out of the past 21 weeks.

Our current risk of COVID-19 infection and spread remains high with an estimated 64,000 who have neither had COVID-19 nor been vaccinated. Since the eligible age of vaccination has been moved from 16 to 12 years, there are now over 205,000 people 12 and older who have not had at least one dose of the vaccine.

As a public good (and duty), please do not relax your efforts until we are truly safe and you and those you associate with are vaccinated. Full immunity does not develop until after the second dose of the two shot vaccines (1 week after Pfizer and 2 weeks after Moderna) and you can still catch and transmit COVID-19. With Janssen, immunity begins 2 weeks after the single shot.

COVID-19 Update: Vaccination

This week global vaccinations continued at a brisk pace. Nearly 1/3 of the world has now received at least one dose. Still no news on vaccinating children under age 12 with recent rumors suggesting this will not be until fall. The world still awaits emergency authorization of the Moderna vaccine for use in 12 to 17 year olds. However, this is expected to be announced any day.

Hundreds of healthcare workers in Indonesia have contracted COVID-19 despite being vaccinated. Many of these are now hospitalized. These healthcare workers had received the Sinovac which has a reported 51% effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19. At this time, these vaccination failures are not felt to be caused by a new variant.

This week worldwide COVID-19 vaccinations reached 2.5 billion doses (2.26 billion last week) with an average of 34 million doses per day. US vaccinations stand at 318 million (309 million last week). About 150 million or 45.6% of Americans are fully vaccinated (43.8% last week).

El Paso continues to make progress toward our threshold for herd immunity of 70 to 90%. This week an additional 11,809 in El Paso received their first dose (9,967 last week) and 17,111 their second (15,501 last week). As of today 510,290 (498,481 last week) have received at least one dose and 425,039 (407,928 last week) have received both. (Our population 12 and older is 686,863). This means 50.6% of our population is fully vaccinated. If we add to this an estimated 351,000 infections, our estimated combined immunity is 776,000 or 92% (infections + fully immunized—90% last week). Approximately 63,000 El Paso residents are still high risk (not vaccinated or infected) and over 205,000 eligible people have not been vaccinated (age 12 and older).

If you have the chance to be vaccinated, please take it. In Texas all people age 12 and older are eligible for vaccination. Remember, so far these vaccines appear to prevent nearly 100% of hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19. To reiterate, these vaccines are both extremely safe and extremely effective.

Please get vaccinated as soon as possible, if not for yourself, for the good of others.

Vaccination Links:

Text or call myWELLNESS® at (915) 845-5700

University Medical Center

Immunize El Paso

City of El Paso Department of Public Health

Albertsons

Walmart

CVS

Walgreens

UTEP (Students and Employees)

VA Patients

El Paso Times COVID-19 Vaccination Guide

myWELLNESS® COVID-19 Vaccine Update

Military Retirees / Active Duty: WBAMC call (915) 742-2915

Wishing you good health,

CG Escandon, MD

Douglas Payne, MD

COVID-19 Information

For the week of 6/21/2021

Assumptions:

• Mortality rate between 0.5% and 1.5% — using 0.75%

• This means 1 death for every 133 infections

• For June 20 — 2,633 total deaths = 351,000 total cases

• 58% or 489,000 El Pasoans have not been infected yet

• The number of deaths lags behind the number of infections by 2-4 weeks

• We estimate the current infection rate to be higher than stated as of June 20th

Assumptions:

Staffed Hospital Beds: 1754

Available Hospital Beds: 572 (1/3 of total)

Staffed ICU Beds: 234

Available ICU Beds: 77 (1/3 of total)