City of Houston public works employees handle wastewater samples at various lift stations and manholes in the city in April 2021. The wastewater is analyzed to detect sars-COV-2.
Contributed/City of HoustonCOVID-19 continues to spread in the Houston area, though there is less information available now for the public to discern trends. That partly is because the rise in at-home testing has reduced the amount of data available since those test results are not reported.
The Houston area also lost one data tracking resource this week when the Texas Medical Center stopped updating its COVID-19 online dashboard after more than two years of publicly posting numbers. The medical center’s dashboard showed 485 new cases on Monday, when the final weekly update posted. The medical center attributed its decision to the ability to effectively manage the virus within the community, according to a statement posted to its website.
Local wastewater remains a useful indicator of COVID-19 viral load, and the latest samples from Houston toilets show a small decrease in traces of COVID-19 since last week, reversing a trend of steady, slight increases since mid-March, according to Houston Health Department spokesman Porfirio Villarreal.
The amount of COVID present in the city’s sewage reached its highest levels during the omicron peak in late December and early January.
A separate COVID-19 dashboard operated by Harris County and the City of Houston still is updated regularly, showing 9,467 active cases in the county and 164 new cases reported on Wednesday. There are no plans to stop updating the dashboard, Villarreal said.
“Figures that the Houston Health Department keeps a close tab on are the positivity rate, wastewater virus load and area hospitalizations,” Villarreal said. “Overall, the last few weeks we have seen slight increases in the positivity rate and the wastewater virus load. Hospital bed usage in ICUs and general beds has been low.”
jen.rice@chron.com
