The Texas Department of State Health Services will work with the University of Texas at Austin to research which COVID-19 variants are spreading in Texas. The project is being funded by the CDC and will increase the state's funding for virus sequencing by 25%.
The first case of someone with the "Omicron" variant in the United States was announced Wednesday in the San Francisco Bay area of California. Jennifer Shuford, chief epidemiologist at the Department of State Health Services, says sequencing can help determine if the Omicron variant has arrived in Texas.
"We think it could already be here, it's just a matter of detecting where it is," she says.
Shuford says sequencing helps scientists determine how a virus is changing.
"What we do is look at each part of that genetic sequence, and we can look for changes," she says. "We know the original one that came out in China, and we know the changes that have happened since then."
Shuford says increased funding for research within the state will give scientists the ability to choose which parts of Texas to pull samples from.
"The CDC has done a fantastic job of really trying to sample all across the United States and getting a good number from Texas," she says. "When they use their contract labs, though, we don't have the chance for input on really where that sampling across the state is happening."
Shuford says the size of Texas makes that variety more important. She says sequencing helps scientists determine how a virus is changing.
"What we do is look at each part of that genetic sequence, and we can look for changes," Shuford says. "We know the original one that came out in China, and we know the changes that have happened since then."
According to the Department of State Health Services, hospitals across Texas have 2,894 COVID patients, up from 2,610 November 20 but down from a peak of almost 14,000 at the beginning of September. Hospitalizations vary in different parts of the state, with COVID patients using just 1.15% of beds around San Angelo and less than three percent in parts of South and Central Texas, but COVID patients occupy 18.5% of beds in the Panhandle.
Wednesday, the Department of State Health Services said hospitals in North Texas had 817 COVID patients using 5.27% of capacity. The area had 153 available adult ICU beds and three open pediatric ICU beds.
Through Wednesday, the agency said 59% of Texans five and older were fully vaccinated, including 58% in Dallas County, 56% in Tarrant County, 66% in Collin County and 61% in Denton County.
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