Kerr County reports death from COVID-19; Texas physician under attack

On a daily basis, COVID-19 omicron variant updates are almost always focused on good, bad and just terrible.

With Thursday's update from the Texas Department of State Health Services, the good was hospitalizations slowed to less than 1% growth for Wednesday, but the "just terrible" was the number of children hospitalized reached a new high — 479.

In Kerr County, a death from Dec. 17 was reported — marking the third death in December. While DSHS says the death toll is 144, this number does not include fatalities at Peterson Health, nursing homes, assisted living homes, the state hospital, the Veteran's Affairs medical center or other long-term-care centers regulated by the state. The Lead believes the death toll is more than 200 people in Kerr County.

The fatality report also demonstrates how far behind DSHS is when posting deaths to its database. This is the second time that DSHS reported a fatality nearly a month old or older in recent weeks.

With Peterson Health not reporting on Thursdays, the best estimate from DSHS was more than 450 positive cases. Peterson, however, has been trending at more than 70 cases per day since last week.

DSHS said Texas had more than 74,000 cases on Thursday.

The state's hospitalization trend grew by less than 100 people, but DSHS reported admissions rose by 2,100 people in 24 hours — one of the most significant one-day surges in recent weeks. Across the San Antonio region, including Kerr County, more than 822 people are hospitalized, including 189 in ICUs. The region held steady for ICU capacity — 57 beds remaining.

On Monday, the Kerr County Commissioner's Court — citing a need to move on — decided not to extend sick leave benefits for COVID-19. Precinct 4 Commissioner Don Harris, who said he'd had COVID twice, said there are too many other illnesses, and it's the height of cedar season to grant extra leave.

Gov. Greg Abbott's only remarks about COVID-19 this week were to celebrate the Supreme Court's decision to temporarily block President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate for large companies on Thursday. In a 6-3 ruling, the court blocked the mandate until lower courts ruled on the case. However, the court voted 5-4 to allow an order that health care workers must be vaccinated — unless there is a medical or religious exemption. We recommend reading more about the court from the SCOTUSBlog's Amy Howe, Fractured court blocks vaccine-or-test requirement for large workplaces but green-lights vaccine mandate for health care workers, SCOTUSblog (Jan. 13, 2022, 4:41 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/01/fractured-court-blocks-vaccine-or-test-requirement-for-large-workplaces-but-green-lights-vaccine-mandate-for-health-care-workers/

Also on Thursday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) attacked Texas physician Dr. Peter Hotez, who has helped develop a groundbreaking vaccine that has already gained emergency use in many nations, including India. Chatting with conservative firebrand Steve Bannon, Greene said, "He thinks he's the authority of truth. Here's the situation, scientists have been wrong over and over and over since the beginning of time. So just because he's a scientist doesn't mean he's right."

Hotez is one of the leading experts on vaccines globally and works at Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor Medical College in Houston. Here was his response:

Here are the Kerr County COVID-19 deaths reported since Oct. 1: