LUBBOCK, Texas — As of Tuesday afternoon, the City of Lubbock COVID-19 dashboard reported -18 (negative eighteen) hospital beds available. It said there were 20 beds available for 38 patients who needed them.
Lubbock added a new section Tuesday to its information dashboard specifically for the availability of hospital beds. In the afternoon, there -18 beds. By Tuesday evening, the dashboard was updated to show it improved to -12.
Hospital capacity steadily decreased from early April to the present, according to information from the city. At the same time, the number of hospitalized COVID patients has, for the most part, been on the rise since mid-June.
Lubbock, on behalf of itself and Lubbock County, reported 26,145 total cases as of Tuesday. The city reported 277 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Last week, a state incident response team set up medical tents outside of both Covenant and University Medical Center to expand hospital capacity.
Trauma Service Area B, which is a 22-county area around Lubbock, has been higher than 15 percent COVID positive for hospital patients since October 19. Certain aspects of economic reopening were rolled back when TSA-B went over 15 percent for seven days in a row.
As of Monday, 25.27 percent of hospital patients in TSA-B were COVID positive.
Just Lubbock and Lubbock County had 299 COVID patients hospitalized as of Monday. For TSA-B as a whole, that number was 380, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
For Lubbock and Lubbock County, 83 were admitted into ICU. Lubbock’s coronavirus death counts have recently been among the highest in the nation.
