AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- Key staging indicators for Austin Public Health's COVID-19 response are continuing to rise, pushing the area closer to a potential return to Stage 5 in the agency's risk-based guidelines.
Austin-Travis County health authority Dr. Desmar Walkes gave an update Tuesday morning to members of the Austin City Council and the Travis County Commissioners' Court.
Walkes said the area will officially remain at Stage 4 for now, even though three of the key indicators that officials are keeping an eye on have all risen above the thresholds for Stage 5.
The three key indicators include the 7-day moving average of new hospitalizations, the community transmission rate, and the community positivity rate.
New hospitalizations have sharply risen in the past two weeks, jumping from 16 to 66 on a 7-day moving average - well above the Stage 5 threshold of 50.
The community transmission rate, which is a measure of the number of new cases over a 7-day period for every 100,000 residents, has more than doubled, rising from 173.5 on Dec. 23 to 434.6 on Jan. 4.
The positivity rate is also seeing a sharp increase, from 8.9% on Dec. 23 to 18.3% on Jan. 4.
Walkes noted that hospitalizations are now including more individuals who are vaccinated; before the omicron variant was widely circulating, between 60 and 70 percent of hospitalizations were those who were unvaccinated. That number has since dropped to about 50 percent.
Health officials continue to urge everyone who can get a vaccine to get one, including a booster dose if eligible.
