As Texas COVID-19 deaths rise, more people under 60 are dying

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The woman in the San Antonio ICU bed was on a ventilator and her lungs were ravaged by COVID-19. After the staff tried everything to help her beat the virus, there was nothing left but to try to make her comfortable as her life passed.

“I’m sorry,” she kept saying to Maria Manzanilla, the young nurse in the intensive care unit at her bedside in the university hospital.

Manzanilla, 27, asked why she was apologizing.

“She kept saying she wished she had the vaccine,” Manzanilla recalls.

About two weeks later, sometime in August, the woman died. She was in her 40s.

She is among the more than 9,000 Texans who died of COVID-19 in August and September, nearly 40% of them under the age of 60, part of an alarming spike in reported daily deaths that added to last summer’s fatal weekly average numbers threaten to outperform.

The dramatic and sudden increase in deaths – which has increased nearly tenfold in two months this summer – comes despite the daily administration of tens of thousands of vaccine doses to Texans.

Experts say it is powered by the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus that hunts the 14 million Texans who remain unvaccinated. About 96% of cases in Texas are the Delta variant, state health officials said.

From the first coronavirus-related death in Texas – March 15, 2020 in Matagorda County – to September 23, 62,033 people have died from the virus nationwide. About half of them have occurred since vaccinations began in Texas in mid-December.

Just over 50% of the Texas population is fully vaccinated. Health officials say the high rate of unvaccinated people in the state over the past month contributed to a surge in hospital admissions that preceded the surge in deaths that followed soon thereafter.

Of the nearly 19,000 deaths in Texas attributed to COVID-19 since early February, 119 were fully vaccinated, according to preliminary data from the state Department of Health.

Scientists are still researching whether the Delta variant is more deadly than previous versions of the virus, but it’s known to be much more contagious and some data suggests it makes people much sicker, much faster than previous versions . The COVID-19 vaccines are extremely effective at preventing serious illness or death, scientists say.

“We shouldn’t be surprised,” said Dr. David Lakey, Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, Chief Medical Officer at the University of Texas System, and a member of the Texas Medical Association’s COVID-19 Task Force, on the death toll. “The main reason death rates are so high is that many people with underlying diseases and not vaccinated have a lot of COVID.”

Delta brings age shift in deaths

Manzanilla, who finished nursing school just weeks before the pandemic started, said that after a year and a half on the frontline as a nurse in the intensive care unit, she is seeing several big differences between the delta rise this summer and the previous increases in January and summer got from 2020.

“This is the wave that they’re a lot sicker on,” she said. “This is the wave that we see them in, and they die much faster. It’s pretty sad. And they’re younger. The dying are much younger than last summer. “

State statistics back up their observations. Compared to previous spikes, people under the age of 60 are a greater proportion of deaths during the recent spike, according to the states.

The deadliest month of the pandemic to date was January – before vaccines were widespread – when 9,914 people died of COVID-19, according to state data. That month, only 15% of COVID-19 deaths were among Texans under the age of 60. Last month, during the peak of the delta rise, they accounted for 38% of deaths.

More Texans under 60 died in August than at any other time in the pandemic. For example, the deaths of Texans in their forties rose to 679 – almost double the previous high for this age group in January 2021. For Texans in their thirties, deaths in August were 33% higher than in winter, while deaths were among the younger ones than 30 – 124 in August – was 77% higher than the previous high for that age group, which was 70 in July 2020.

Older people are still the most likely to die, despite the fact that their vaccination rate has reached 98% in some areas and 79% of Texans 65 and over nationwide are fully vaccinated. That’s because they’re still more prone to the disease and far more likely to die from infection than their younger counterparts, said Spencer Fox, associate director of the University of Texas’ COVID-19 modeling consortium.

While deaths in this age group also increased in August, they were well below their highs in winter and last summer.

Hospital admissions peaked nationwide in August – nearly hitting the record highs seen in January’s surge – and more hospitals reported ICU or ICU overcapacity than at any other time in the pandemic. These numbers are starting to flatten or decrease, along with the positivity rate, which measures the percentage of positive COVID tests.

It’s an encouraging sign that the delta surge is finally peaking, although it’s not certain, Fox said.

Millions of Texas students returned to school in person in August and September, many of them in mask-free districts, as Governor Greg Abbott argues with districts in high-transmission areas over how much authority they have to enforce behaviors that may help lower the infection Prices.

Fox said he would expect a setback to school this fall, if there is one.

“Right now we’re forecasting an overall decline in the state over the next several weeks, which is a very promising trend,” said Fox. “We don’t have enough data yet to understand the impact school reopening could have on trends.”

Deaths are a lagging indicator: they rise after COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions rise and then fall as those indicators fall.

“We need to use a dose of humility and caution as we look at these numbers and wonder why the death toll continues to increase for a while after we have passed this hospital hospital peak,” said Lakey.

“Angry and Frustrated” about the new wave of COVID-19

Last summer, Manzanilla said she and her nurses were afraid of the new virus and were heartbroken for the patients they witnessed death. Often the nurses would sit with them so that they would not die alone, while their devastated relatives could only watch through windows or smartphones due to the visiting restrictions of COVID-19.

This summer, Manzanilla said, she mostly felt “angry and frustrated”. And contradicting itself.

“We were worried at first, but we turned into anger,” she said. “These people didn’t die before COVID and now they come in and get this virus and they die and the community could have prevented that.

“But at the same time, you feel sorry for the patient because… they’re still human,” she added. “You are still here. They are sick and we are here to take care of them. “

Manzanilla said that, like others in her profession, she is burned out and is considering a career change after the pandemic subsides. There has been too much grief, too much death in the past year. She decided to become a nurse and work in a doctor’s office rather than on the front lines of tragedy.

“It’s very hard work,” she said as a nurse in the intensive care unit. “I’ll be going back to school in a year. I don’t think I can stay in bed long. I thought I could, but I don’t think I can. “

Disclosure: The Texas Medical Association and University of Texas System are financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations, and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the journalism of the Tribune. You can find a full list of them here.

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source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/09/24/as-texas-covid-19-deaths-rise-more-people-under-60-are-dying/