MIDLAND, Texas — Local hospitals have seen a spike in COVID-19 death rates at the beginning of September.
"We have had a high number of mortalities, a total of 12 already in only 9 days of September," said Russell Meyers, CEO for Midland Health. "That's ahead of the pace we saw in August, which was the third highest mortality month we've had since the beginning of the pandemic."
In Odessa, Medical Center Hospital has seen 21 deaths since the first of the month, with Odessa Regional Medical Center having 7.
"That's not normal, that's not normal at all," said Dr. Rohith Saravanan of Odessa Regional Medical Center.
COVID-19 hospitalization numbers have decreased and remained stable over the past week, but some of those numbers could have to do with the recent deaths in the hospitals.
"Some of the loss in numbers is because of the deaths happening at the hospital," said Saravanan.
When it comes to deaths at hospitals overall, numbers have increased since the start of the pandemic.
"Those COVID deaths are net new deaths, above a very stable average number of deaths, over multiple years, that would not have just happened otherwise," said Meyers.
Health officials believe the vaccine could help keep numbers down.
"As we have the opportunity to be vaccinated, the vast majority of these are unnecessary deaths, they didn't have to happen due to COVID," said Meyers. "They didn't have to happen now, but they continue to happen and there's no question that this thing is real, and it is having a devastating impact on our community."
One of the biggest hopes is that COVID-19 hospitalization numbers will continue to go down.
"We are cautiously optimistic that this could be the peak, but we don't know for certain that this is," said Saravanan.