HEALTH CARE

Only 40% of Texas’ rural hospitals offer labor and delivery services, forcing some patients to drive hundreds of miles to give birth. With nurses in short supply, more hospitals are considering cutting those services entirely.

More than 60 people became ill after a funeral reception in Texas. Two years later, some of them are still coping with the financial and medical consequences.

If Texas politicians seem to be tinkering at the edges of major issues like the pandemic, electric blackouts and education, an election year is the best opportunity to set them straight.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision means it could take months before abortion providers’ challenge to the restrictive law returns to a federal court.

Texas will soon surpass its previous COVID-19 hospitalization record. Doctors and nurses say they can’t keep up this pace for much longer and implore people to get vaccinated.

Officials in the state’s major metropolitan areas are increasingly scrambling to find health care workers to deal with a wave of patients with COVID-19.

Last fall, just as younger Texans received the green light to get vaccinated, omicron came rushing in, sending more of them to the hospital.

School district leaders are desperately trying to fill vacant roles to stay open and some say they have no choice but to close.

It’s unclear whether the local mandate, which requires businesses to post signs outlining their safety guidelines, is in conflict with Gov. Greg Abbott’s previous pandemic orders.

The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked a Biden administration rule that ordered businesses with 100 or more employees to require their staff to get vaccinated or get tested for COVID-19 every week. But the high court allowed a vaccine mandate for health care workers to stand.

“The situation in Texas is that it probably won’t reach the peak [for cases] until the second half of January,” a top researcher said.

Health officials are asking people to stop visiting hospitals for testing and avoid adding an additional strain on the state’s health care system.

The state has already challenged the federal government’s vaccine orders for big businesses, health care workers and federal contractors.

The number is surging, though it is still much lower than the peak one year ago.

Patrick’s office said he tested positive for COVID-19 last week and experienced mild symptoms but has since tested negative.

Officials added 36 to the estimate of lives lost in the disaster, which knocked out power in much of the state. Some experts place the toll even higher.

The governor asked the federal government for help opening test sites in Bexar, Cameron, Dallas, Harris, Hidalgo and Tarrant counties.

As 2021 comes to a close, here’s a look back at just some of our favorite images captured by Texas Tribune photographers all over the state — and across the nation — to tell the stories of Texans in a challenging year.

In 2021, the Tribune’s data visuals team helped tell the biggest stories affecting Texans. Here’s a roundup of our most impactful work.

The highly contagious omicron variant has led to a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases in Texas. Hospitalizations are beginning to increase in a health care system already troubled by staffing shortages.

Five of the department’s regional infusion centers have run out of sotrovimab, the only antibody treatment known to be effective against the new variant.

Weddington was just 26 when she argued the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in her first appearance before the high court.

Texas politics in 2021 were marked by a violent insurrection at the nation’s Capitol and state legislative fights over abortion, voting rights and redistricting. Our photojournalists were there every step of the way.

The state’s COVID-19 mental health support line has seen a spike in calls since early December as people navigate holidays amid a highly contagious new variant.

Texans are taking varying levels of precautions as they finish holiday shopping and prepare for Christmas worship services.

So far this month, at least 1.2 million Texans have gotten booster shots — nearly triple the number of people who received their first doses of the vaccine during the same time.

The Texas Department of State Health Services, which tracks the number of coronavirus vaccinations, cases, hospitalizations and deaths across the state, won’t be updating its daily dashboard Friday through Sunday both this week and next over the holidays.

Abbott’s office says vaccines are the best defense to the pandemic, however, the governor has rarely spoken about vaccines in recent months other than to push back against mandates. He did not respond to a question about whether he got the booster.

Untreated medical conditions, lack of access to testing and limited paid time off leave uninsured Texans particularly vulnerable to the disease.

Most local officials insist they still have testing capacity at their public testing sites, but Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said demand has outpaced supply.

Some hospitals are better prepared than they were early in the pandemic, but administrators say staff morale still stands on shaky ground.

While Texas’ controversial abortion law strictly refers to women in its phrasing, it also limits access to the procedure for transgender and nonbinary people who are able to become pregnant.

Hospitalizations related to the virus remain low in the state, but the number of people testing positive is rising and once again fueling worries about the struggling health care system’s ability to weather a new surge.

Just as many legal experts predicted, the enforcement provision in Texas’ new law restricting abortion has become a magnet for other states that want to limit constitutionally protected rights.

Our tracker presents the latest on tests, cases, hospitalizations, people who died and vaccinations. We want to know how this information can be more valuable to readers.

The justices allowed the challenge against the law to proceed but mangled abortion providers' legal strategy and set the table for another elongated court fight. Meanwhile, abortion access in the state remains severely restricted.

Mark Lee Dickson helped Texas towns ban abortion. On Friday, the Supreme Court declined to block a state law modeled on his ordinance. “We can go anywhere now,” he said.

On this week's episode, Matthew and Reese make sense of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision and what it means for abortion in Texas.

Texas, the birthplace of Roe v. Wade, has been at the forefront of major battles over abortion access ever since. Friday’s ruling ensures the state remains on the frontlines.

Texas’ nursing home staff vaccination rates are lower than half the country’s — but a judge’s decision last week to delay a vaccine mandate helped them avoid laying off a third of their employees.

Early indicators suggest the variant is very contagious, but little is known about the severity of disease it causes.

In this week’s episode, Matthew speaks with Mitchell, James and Karen about the status of the power grid and the pandemic heading into winter.

Beginning today, a new law restricts abortion-inducing medication, the most common abortion method in Texas.

So much is unknown about the new COVID-19 variant: the severity of the illness it causes, whether it can resist vaccines and natural antibodies and whether it’s more contagious than the delta variant that has burned through Texas and the U.S. for months.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had called the mandate “an unprecedented federal vaccine decree” on health care workers.

Texas has passed legislation that ensures abortion would be made a felony if Roe v. Wade is overturned “wholly or partly,” as the court considers Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban.

A surge in COVID-19 cases from the West is impacting El Paso.

Female clergy say the state's new abortion restrictions fail to consider women's lives.

For two months, providers have had to work in a sort of limbo as they wait to see if the new law passes the Supreme Court's review.

As the political season starts, the contestants got an unexpected bit of good news: The state comptroller says the next Legislature will start with almost $25 billion in the state treasury. Expensive campaign promises just got a lot easier to make.

An anti-abortion protest of about 20 stood right next to the larger group in support of pro-abortion rights. Both crowds had a mix of younger and older participants taking part in each’s version of popular protest chants.

Filipe Ribeiro of Doctors Without Borders Afghanistan talks to NPR about the future of the country's health care system under Taliban rule.

Rush University Medical Center is mandating COVID-19 vaccines for its workers, joining at least a handful of other Chicago area hospitals that are also requiring the shots.

The average stock in the index entered 2019 with a projected 24% gain, according to Bespoke. Company analysts see only modest upside for stocks overall this year, a rare view for the normally bullish crowd. For the 10 largest stocks, two Apple and JP Morgan Chase are already trading above their average price target. Consumer staples, financials and utilities are the three sectors with the lowest average upside, all below 3%. Energy is the only sector that cracks double digits, with the average price target 15.2% above the stock price.