HOUSTON – A troubling trend in the latest COVID-19 numbers across Texas.
The State’s Department of Health Services tweeted out a message indicating cases are quickly on the rise, hospital capacity is a concern and more deaths are likely.
“I think we need to take pause and really consider these numbers are real. Nobody wants to have another May, another June, another July like we did," said Isabel Valdez, a physician assistant at Baylor College of Medicine.
Valdez believes part of the reason for the rise in numbers is the cooler temperatures and people not going outside as much.
“Instead, they’re going to stay inside and that’s just going propagate this little uptick that we’re seeing right now it’s probably going to propagate into bigger wave very soon,” Valdez said.
A look at the latest graphs show the steady climb across Texas in both the number of new covid cases and hospitalizations.
Although the death rate remains down, those numbers are often delayed by days if not weeks.
“We don’t want to max out our hospitals no matter how many beds that we have available, let’s not use them all," Valdez said.
With the holiday season around the corner, Valdez said people should take precautions now by staying home, limiting the people you see and creating a “holiday bubble” or a small group of people you can trust that are taking the necessary precautions to stop the spread of COVID-19.
”Who are the select few that we can actually be careful with and be loyal to. And they’re loyal to us and they’re careful with us and helping us not spread this disease and mitigating the spread," Valdez said.