Facing unknowns of the ongoing COVID-19 saga is part of the mission for George Roberts, CEO of the Northeast Texas Public Health District, or NET Health. He shares his unique perspective on the current situation, especially as it relates to East Texas, taking a deep-dive into the rise of COVID-19 hospital admissions and the emergence of a new variant.
Roberts shares invaluable insights into tracking methods and explores the concept of COVID-19 becoming endemic, drawing parallels to flu and cold seasons. He also discusses the importance of age-old hygiene practices, the role of home test kits, and a long-awaited update to the COVID-19 vaccine that includes a version of the Omicron strain.
MIKE LANDESS: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. Some would say it’s back; some would say it never really went away. During the last week of July, COVID-19 hospital admissions across the country were more than 9,000, with an increase about 12% over the previous week. And the EG.5 version of Omicron is appearing more frequently, while no particular variant of that virus is dominant. Here to discuss what all of that might mean in East Texas is George Roberts, CEO of NET Health (the Northeast Texas Public Health District). Welcome.
GEORGE ROBERTS: Hi, Mike. How are you today? It’s nice to be here.
LANDESS: It’s good to have you here. For perspective, that 9,000-plus figure is nothing like the nearly 45,000 we had in late July of last year.
ROBERTS: Oh gosh, absolutely not. I mean, the numbers have been up a little bit in July and August, but if you compare to ’22, ’21, or a 2020, there’s no comparison. And the other thing, Mike, about COVID has been, early on there was no such thing as home test. So every single COVID case was reported to us for our area. Now, with the home tests, we don’t have as much data on the number of positives in our community, but we do know as the people who go, who get sick, they typically will go to their physician or clinic and get tested. We have that information. And then we also have the hospitalization information to kind of keep track of.
LANDESS: It’s my understanding that for the last 3 years there’s been an uptick of reported COVID cases in the month of July. Is there any reason to be especially concerned with this uptick?
ROBERTS: That’s kind of been the question I’ve had the whole time. First year is like okay, 2020, well, it doesn’t follow the flu season, it’s hot. People are inside, outside. Why is it happening in July? Well, it happened 2020. OK, that’s first year. Happened again in 2021. Happened again some in 2022. And then the cases this year in 2023, July and early August started going up again. Why is that? I don’t have a real good answer to that. Other than say it’s almost like I can set my clock now to say, OK, I know we’re going to have a little bit of uptick in July and August, and we have.
LANDESS: I’m not sure I have the proper word for this. At some point during the, in trying to understand pandemic and that sort of thing, they said eventually this may become-is it “endemic”?
ROBERTS: Yes, endemic.
LANDESS: That is going to be like the flu season or a cough and cold season or whatever. It’s going to be something that’s going to happen every year to some extent.
ROBERTS: Yeah, I think that you know, because we know the flu season typically happens in the, you know, late fall, you know into the early into the winter. We think you know they’ll be typically-In the past there’s been spikes of COVID around Thanksgiving and Christmas. We kind of explained that because all families are getting together. We can kind of explain that one away. But that’s, the July-August thing has been real hard for me to kind of wrap my arms around. Why does that happen, other than it’s been happening?
LANDESS: Well, now we’re back, everybody’s back in school. We may see, some may see the numbers change a little bit.
ROBERTS: And so that’s where we kind of get into. People say, well, what do I do about it? Well, you know we talked about early in the pandemic, there’s some basic, just health things that we all learn at school growing up. Like you know, first thing is wash your hands a lot. You know, it’s still fascinating to me when I go into a public restroom to see guys walk out without washing their hands. You know, during the pandemic early on, people were washing their hands. They were doing it for 20 seconds, and nowadays they’re kind of getting more lax about that. And the second thing that we really talked a lot about when the pandemic started and, you know, I was, you know, we all, you know, at our age, with our white hair, Mike, we typically were brought up like, if you have a little cold or maybe have a little headache that day, go to work. You’re not a tough guy if you don’t get over it. Yeah, get over it, rub some dirt on it. And so one of the things that we talked about is that if you’re sick, stay home. Because we knew with COVID, and we also know with other diseases, that how does it spread? Well, it spreads person to person. So, or by touching doorknobs, whatever. So, stay home when you’re sick, wash your hands a lot and take, you know, exercise and eat a nutritious diet.
LANDESS: You know, I’m embarrassed to say that I’m still after, after the whole business where COVID was at its peak, I still sing the birthday song in my head as I’m washing my hands.
ROBERTS: The training work we did, did a good job then.
LANDESS: Happy birthday to you…
ROBERTS: Mike, I’m glad to hear that.
LANDESS: We’re trying to do that. Because federal authorities ended the public health emergency in May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many states no longer tracked the number of positive test results. And you mentioned the thing about home testing. How about here in Texas? Do we still track all that?
ROBERTS: Yes, we still track that. We still every week on our website, which is myNETHealth.org. You can go every Thursday, we update our website with all the cases that have been reported in a 7-county area, which includes Smith and Gregg County. We report that. We give you the numbers, how many you know were confirmed cases, how many were probable cases. We also give you, every week, a hospitalization number, the title of hospitals, and I can tell you last Thursday our hospital number is at 24. So again, if you want to stay up to date with what’s happening here in East Texas on COVID, go to our website, myNETHealthorg.
LANDESS: You mentioned the tests a moment ago. I had gotten some information recently saying that the availability of tests locally here in East Texas was a little spotty. What is your take on that?
ROBERTS: We did some checking around after you asked me about that. We checked around, and they were available, but it wasn’t available everywhere. And I think I was in a pharmacy the other day and asked, “Where are your test kits?” and they said, “They’re over there.” So they’re, they seem to be getting restocked again right now, but the test kits. But, you know, I encourage people to — I have several test kits at my house. OK, if I’m thinking I’m coming down with it, go test myself.
LANDESS: This fall, officials expect to see an updated COVID-19 vaccine that contains one version of the Omicron strain called XBB 1.5. That’s very technical.
ROBERTS: That is very technical.
LANDESS: It’s an important change from today’s combination shots, which mixed the original coronavirus strain with last year’s most common Omicron variants. When might we see that new vaccine here in Texas?
ROBERTS: We think sometime, maybe September, September-October range. So you know, sometime along that. And that’s again COVID. You know, we encourage people that stay up to date on your COVID vaccines. The other thing is the flu shots are coming out. And we have been talking about flu shots for years. So it’s your opportunity to get a flu shot every year. You know it, again, what we’ve seen with the COVID shots is the same thing with the flu shots. Just because you get a COVID shot doesn’t mean you’re gonna get COVID. Just because you get a flu shot doesn’t mean you’re not gonna get the flu. But your chances of having a really severe case go down dramatically once you’ve had that vaccination.
LANDESS: Can you get the flu shot and the COVID shot at the same time?
ROBERTS: You can. People have done that. I probably won’t, just because I like I’m kind of a one-shot-at-a-time-type of guy, But yeah, you can get the COVID and the flu shot at the same time.
LANDESS: Any, like, soreness or anything like that?
ROBERTS: Probably soreness. You know how you know your body is. You’re taking all these, the vaccine materials, into your body, so your body will, you know your body, goes into the, as we call it: “You’re waking up the soldiers.” You’re waking up the soldiers, so the soldiers are, you know, going into battle there to help protect your body for the future.
LANDESS: Any final thoughts for folks before we head out today?
ROBERTS: Yeah, main thing is I just, I encourage people to, you know, stay up to date on what’s going on with COVID, but also stay up to date with flu and other diseases that are out there. The best thing you can do is, you know, we again encourage people stay home when you’re sick, wash your hands a lot, eat a good nutritious meal and exercise. Those are the things that you can really think about for the days ahead.
LANDESS: Our guest has been George Roberts, CEO of NET Health. To hear this conversation again or to share it, go to KVUT.org. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)