Top infectious disease doctor doesn’t think El Paso will see major Covid spike

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- One of El Paso's top infectious disease experts said he does not believe El Paso hospitals will be overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients, like other major Texas cities are.

Dr. Ogechika Alozie spoke about the statewide Covid trends on Tuesday's edition of ABC-7's Good Morning El Paso.

"I think it's important to understand that in Austin, Houston and Dallas, they're concerned. Their hospitals are at capacity or above capacity in many cases. They also sent patients not only to our city, but other cities across the state," Alozie said. "We don't want to get there. I personally don't believe we will get there. We're in a good position."

Alozie pointed to the fact that more than 70 percent of eligible El Pasoans are fully vaccinated, plus the fact that a large portion of the population has natural immunity after recovering from the virus.

"You never want to be too over confident. I think it's important to continue to focus on that 20% of that population that doesn't have vaccines," he said. "We already have 20-30% of our community that had Covid…. we're in a good space. That's why we haven't seen our numbers go up dramatically."

Despite Texas children's hospitals seeing an increase in pediatric Covid patients, Alozie said the Delta variant does not appear to be more dangerous than the original strain.

"The data doesn't show that this variant is necessarily more virulent or makes people sicker. What we do know is it's more transmissible," Alozie said. "Now that we have more kids in school with a virus that's more contagious, you expect to have more cases. We don't expect to have sicker kids, but there is going to be a lot more kids that are infected."