Due to the holiday season, North Texans will see increased lines at COVID-19 testing sites.
According to Fox 4 News, it is expected to take another week before the state will know how many were affected by the Omicron variant during the holiday travel period.
According to stores like Walmart, there have also been outstanding requests for at-home COVID-19 testing kits. Due to the high demand, there is a shortage of testing kits across the United States.
A few weeks ago, one Oak Lawn testing site owner stated that they were only testing 20-30 people a day. This past Sunday, several hundred people were tested.
Many people were left waiting in their cars for hours to get tested.
One woman, Madeleine Restrepo, drove her grandmother to a testing site. She told Fox 4 News, “The line wasn’t as long when we got here, but it’s still been two hours.” Her grandmother needed a negative result to return to her home in Columbia.
Restrepo and her family are lucky enough not to experience any symptoms, but others cannot say the same.
White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci explained that even though the Omicron variant is less extreme, it is still highly transmissible.
“[Omicroni is] even the most contagious of the previous ones, including Delta. There’s no argument on anybody’s part about that,” he said.
Fauci warns that people should still practice safety measures. “Even though we’re pleased by the evidence from multiple countries, that it looks like there is a lesser degree of severity, we’ve got to be careful that we don’t get complacent about that,” he said.
In North Texas, there are currently nearly 1,000 patients hospitalized due to COVID-19, which is the highest amount the state has seen in two months, but it is only 20% of what was seen during the height of the pandemic.
DFW Hospital Council CEO Dr. Steve Love reassures those who are vaccinated by saying, “If you’re vaccinated, yes, you might get a breakthrough virus, but you probably won’t be in the hospital.”
He also said that although Omicron is not the most prevalent variant in North Texas yet, he believes it will be. “Omicron is here, don’t get [me] wrong, but it’s not the dominant strain [in North Texas],” he said.
