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.

COVID-19 continues to spread in the Houston area, though there is less information available now for the public to discern trends, due in part to the rise in at-home testing because those test results are not reported.

That makes the current case count an unreliable metric that is difficult to interpret, according to Dr. James McDeavitt, executive vice president and dean of clinical affairs at Baylor College of Medicine.

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 stop updating the dashboard to the ability to effectively manage the virus within the community, according to a statement posted to its website.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Texas Medical Center ending weekly COVID-19 data updates, even as cases rise in Houston

"We've got one leading indicator that's still pretty good, and that's the wastewater analysis, and that's released by the city and you can track it on the CDC website," McDeavitt said. "The other number I still look at is the hospitalization rate."

While the medical center no longer is sharing its hospitalization rate publicly, McDeavitt said he monitors the numbers internally and considers Harris County to be in good shape on hospital admissions.

The Texas Medical Center did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the impact of keeping hospitalization rate data private.

"We're in a pretty low risk zone in Harris County and the surrounding counties, but the fact that we're low risk should not be read as 'the pandemic's over,'" McDeavitt said.

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"Get vaccinated. Get current on your boosters. It is in everybody's best interest to prevent the spread of the disease, to protect yourself from getting critically ill and, increasingly, some evidence that if you're vaccinated, you are less likely to experience symptoms of long COVID, which are becoming more of a problem."

The Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council still is updating its COVID figures online. The number of COVID patients occupying ICU beds in Harris County was at 64, or 4.2 percent of ICU beds Thursday, according to SETRAC.

The latest samples from Houston’s wastewater 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 spokesperson 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 is a reporter for the Houston Chronicle. She covers local government in Harris County.

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