CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — As medical experts across the country predicted, COVID-19 cases are now decreasing dramatically after they skyrocketed at the start of the year due to the omicron variant.
While there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel, one local expert cautions that the omicron variant is still out there infecting both the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
"There are a lot fewer cases now then since the pandemic started, but there are more breakthrough cases and more people getting reinfected, " said Dr. Chris Bird, member of the COVID-19 Task Force and professor of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
Despite this, he said that getting a vaccine helps tremendously.
"The severity of your symptoms with versus without vaccination will be always be with vaccination, less than they would of been without. That's what the vaccinations are doing for you," he said.
In total, we have had almost 10,000 hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic in Nueces County. Out of those hospitalizations, just over 400 where breakthrough cases. Further proof of the impact of vaccines, so far we've had just over 96,700 cases of COVID-19, and of those, just over 14,000 were breakthrough cases.
