COVID-19's Delta variant has sent Texas hospitals back to crisis levels not seen since the bad old days of late February, before vaccines were widely available. The state is averaging about 12,400 new cases a day. More than 10,000 Texans, mostly unvaccinated, have been hospitalized for COVID-19 this week — a 400 percent increase in the last month — and ICUs in at least 53 hospitals are full.
"If this continues, and I have no reason to believe that it will not, there is no way my hospital is going to be able to handle this," Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, a top health official in Houston's Harris County, told state lawmakers Tuesday. "I am one of those people that always sees the glass half-full, I always see the silver lining. But I am frightened by what is coming."
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