get her family vaccinated. we are definitely sensing that urgency from the people who lined up yesterday to get a vaccine. boris and christi. natasha chen, appreciate it. thank you. so dr. joseph, chief of staff at united memorial center in houston is with us now. thank you for going here. really appreciate you. we know that just under 47% of people in harris county are fully vaccinated. slightly higher than texas overall. but i was reading, according to cnn tracker numbers, there has been a 500% increase in covid admissions, and that florida and texas account for about a third of all u.s. covid cases that have been reported in the last week. talk to us about what you are seeing in your hospital. i mean, it s interesting talking about this because, you know, over the last 12 hours i have lost more patients than the
gulf coast and now it s hitting east texas and our texas medical center now is getting hit very hard here in houston with lots and lots of covid admissions. it s like nothing we ve seen before. it s many, many young people, including, i m sorry to say, many children s hospital admissions. and for the first time that i can remember, we re starting to see pediatric intensive care units get overwhelmed, which we never really saw before. and, jim, this is happening before school starts. so school starts in new orleans sorry, school starts in many parishes in louisiana next week. here in houston, houston independent school district in a couple of weeks, august 23rd. this is the warmup back, jim. as bad as this is, this is the warmup act. that s the message. we have to make it clear that we re not screwing around. the president needs to be out there saying this is a full-blown crisis like nothing we ve seen before and it s first