AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- Travis County hospitals are nearing capacity in their intensive care units, according to new data released Friday.
Out of 483 ICU beds across the three major hospital networks in Travis County - Ascension Seton, Baylor Scott & White, and St. David's - 87% were occupied as of Friday. The area has a total of 2,473 staffed hospital beds - of which 75% were occupied as of Friday's report.
Austin Public Health, which reports daily on hospital utilization across the five-county metro area, on Monday night reported 246 COVID-19 patients in area hospitals, with 75 in intensive care and 44 on ventilators.
"We are concerned with the trends in COVID-19 hospitalizations and ICU capacity," Austin Public Health officials said in a statement. "We are beginning to see initial numbers that can be attributed to gatherings for Thanksgiving."
APH officials said Sunday that the area's first shipment of vaccine doses is expected to arrive in mid-December, with frontline healthcare workers set to be the first to receive the vaccine. "We are excited for our hospital systems partners to begin vaccinating our front-line hospital workers against this virus," Travis County interim health authority Dr. Mark Escott said in a statement. "By protecting our healthcare system personnel we can ensure that we are able to meet the needs of COVID and non-COVID patients in our community. We are looking forward to vaccine shipments continuing in the weeks and months to come so that, in future phases, we can offer vaccines to those at high risk for severe disease as we progress down the path of community-wide vaccination."
If the number of hospitalizations continues to rise, officials say a move to Stage 5 of the risk-based guidelines could be possible. That would recommend - though not require - area businesses to close for all but curbside pickup and delivery, and postpone elective surgeries.
