COVID rates increasing; omicron is now dominant strain in Galveston County
The Galveston County Daily News, December 20, 2021
The rate of people testing positive for COVID-19 at University of Texas Medical Branch facilities tripled from about 5 percent of samples to 15 percent over the past week, an increase that has medical branch officials warning Galveston has joined the rest of the country in a variant-driven spike. Dr. Janak Patel, the director of Infection Control and Healthcare Epidemiology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, called the jump in the positivity rate mind- boggling. “We tripled our positivity rate within a week,” Patel said. “Not even a week. Just in five days.”