Texas Medical Center seeing more COVID-19 cases in younger age groups
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- As we head into November, we're seeing some new and concerning trends regarding COVID-19. The Texas Medical Center said it is starting to see an uptick in hospitalizations.
"It's very clear from our charts, you see a real slow hockey swing back up now to 100 plus cases a day. We were as low as 78 cases, on average, per day," said president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center, Bill McKeon.
One hundred plus is far less than the 360 they were seeing back in June and July, but the numbers are going in the wrong direction.
McKeon said the patients in the hospital are younger adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s.
"We're seeing more and more younger people with the virus in the hospital. What's interesting, we see that many of them in our med surgical area and [they] have not progressed on to the ICU," he said.
They're also seeing more children.
"[At] one of our hospitals, we've doubled the number of children with COVID," said McKeon.
He said the doubling occurred over a week.
"We think there could be a number of things. We see sports programs are coming back online, schools are coming back online, so it's only natural whenever you bring people together, it's a perfect algorithm for spreading," said McKeon.
As for the overall uptick in cases, McKeon thinks people are going to gatherings.
"We often think that even our friends or family are somewhat safer for us to drop those fundamentals of masking and physical distancing. And sadly, that's not the case," said McKeon.
He said with the holidays coming up, we need to stay vigilant because stopping the spread is something we all can take part in.
"We, together, are the only ones who transfer the virus in our behaviors. We can stop it," he said.
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