Covid-19, and El Paso

Interesting article on how El Paso is following a different Covid path than the rest of Texas:

But while delta raged through most of the state's 254 counties in July and August, breaking records and overwhelming hospitals in both rural conservative areas and sprawling liberal metros, El Paso — with one of the highest vaccination rates in the state — has been relatively unscathed by the most recent surge.

"We held our breath after July Fourth, but we didn't see the increase we thought we'd see in terms of hospitalizations," said Martinez, a local government employee.

While some other metro areas like Austin reported record high numbers of COVID-19 patients in their area hospitals just last month, and while statewide hospitalizations came close to eclipsing the January peak of 14,218, El Paso-area hospitals, which serve nearly a million West Texas residents, haven't come close to their previous highs. 

...Helgesen and others say much of the credit can be attributed to the area's high vaccination rate, widespread compliance with masking and social distancing, and a strong partnership among local community and health care leaders.

"It is amazing," Helgesen said. "It is absolutely a credit to our community. I really think it was an all-out effort."

The share of COVID-19 tests in El Paso that come back positive is hovering around 6%, while the statewide positivity rate is three times that at 18%. 

And while COVID-19 patients, most of whom are unvaccinated, took up more than 30% of hospital capacity in some areas and more than 20% statewide last week, in El Paso they accounted for only 7% of patients in local hospitals.

For a city with one of the state's highest per-capita COVID-19 death counts, the numbers present a rare glimmer of good news for the traumatized residents of this West Texas border city. 

"Compared to the rest of Texas, we're in heaven," said Gabriel Ibarra-Mejia, assistant professor of public health at the University of Texas-El Paso. "That doesn't mean we are free from COVID, but we're doing much, much better than most of the rest of the state. The numbers don't lie."