HOUSTON — The number of Houstonians being admitted to local hospitals is on a steady incline, Mayor Sylvester Turner announced Saturday.
During his 11th annual "Back to School Fest," Turner announced 393 people were admitted to local hospitals in a single day.
The Texas Medical Center's website confirms its hospitals admitted 393 COVID patients on Thursday.
"That's the fourth-largest number of hospital admissions due to COVID since the pandemic began," Turner said.
On Wednesday, 375 people who tested positive for COVID were hospitalized.
The mayor then said they're nearly 2,300 people currently in area hospitals with COVID-19.
A little over three weeks ago the number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 was about 500, Turner said. That number has since taken a "dramatic" increase.
“All of this is pretty much preventable,” Turner said. "You don’t have to get sick because of COVID. You don’t have to end up in a hospital and you don’t have to die."
As we’ve been reporting, COVID cases are not only surging again in the Houston area but across Texas, hospitals are filling up.
As of Saturday afternoon, the Texas health department dashboard reported 11,381 Texans hospitalized with COVID. This number eclipsed the surge from last summer that got as high as 10,893.
Both numbers are still below the peak of the pandemic, which was in January of 2021, when Texas had 14,218 people hospitalized with COVID.
Across the entire state, there are 327 ICU beds available, though in the Texas Medical Center, they can operate under surge capacity.
The Texas health department updates its numbers daily at 4 p.m.
KHOU 11's Brandi Smith explains how surge capacity works.