It's the smaller Texas cities now getting hammered the hardest by Covid-19.
El Paso and and Amarillo have sky-high positivity rates at 41 and 32 percent respectively. Dr. James McDeavitt, dean of clinical affairs at the Baylor College of Medicine says the earlier surges slammed the urban areas and was not as bad in the rural ones. "Now across the entire US it's flipped 180 degrees. So now most of the explosion in coronavirus is in smaller communities and much less so in urban areas." He says growth is slow in Houston, but El Paso and smaller cities are increasing at an alarming rate."
He says in Houston in July "we had a near death experience. We were the epicenter of Covid-19 literally in the world. We thought our hospitals were going to be overrun." So more of the population masked up and the cases fell. He says the smaller communities didn't go through that. "Unfortunately you might have to experience that as a community before you get enoough buy in that the masking and distancing are actually important."
He says someone he knows in Houston had recently traveled to West Texas and entered a crowded gas station. She had a mask on and put a face shield on top of the mask. Everybody turned around and stared at her like she was from Mars. She said no one was masked and she was standing out. I just don't think it's been adopted to the same degree."
More than 6,000 Texans are hospitalized with the virus.