Climbing COVID-19 Infections Cast Doubt on Dallas' Herd Immunity

DALLAS, TX —The metroplex is back in the red. After weeks of debate as to whether North Texans had really reached herd immunity, the DFW area seems poised for another surge of COVID-19 illness, hospitalization and ultimately, deaths.

According to The Texas Tribune, which has been tracking the pandemic, the local positivity rate has now crossed into "the red zone," a worrisome threshold that indicates 10 percent of the population or more is infected.

There are two reasons. One is the delta variant, which is spreading across the country at such an alarming rate it's affected the stock market today, and the few and dwindling numbers of those in the metroplex who've been vaccinated.

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At this point last month, the positivity rate was at 2.8 percent. Now it's as high as it was in mid-February — a point just after the worst of the last surge when few Texans even had the opportunity to be vaccinated and almost none had been inoculated more than once. At that point, much of the state was still taking some measures to prevent the spread of the disease.

But now, guidelines have been lifted, Gov. Greg Abbott has banned the use of so-called passports to keep unvaccinated Texans from circulating as freely as those who have been inoculated, and only fewer than 43 percent of the population have received a dose of the Johnson & Johnson or two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer shots.

To make matters worse, the vaccination site at Fair Park is closing because there were so few people showing up for inoculations, despite being free to the public. And, according to a poll taken a month ago, nearly half of the respondents say they've returned to life as it was before the pandemic.

The lowest percentage that even approaches herd immunity is 70 percent.

There was an insistence last month that the DFW area had surpassed that marker when the Parkland Center of Clinical Innovation released a statement claiming the area had reached 80 percent immunity.

But more than half the number they counted were of residents who'd recovered from a COVID-19 illness and had achieved what they called "natural immunity." And, as critics were quick to point out, no one yet knows how long natural immunity lasts, and scores of cases have been recorded of victims becoming reinfected with the virus.

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