The easily transmissible delta variant is causing concern for New Mexico hospitals.“We're seeing people in earlier age groups, 30s-40s, younger people not as much in the older populations,” said Dr. Vesta Sandoval of Lovelace Hospital.At Christus St. Vincent, while most hospitalized are nonvaccinated, there's concern about those who are vaccinated spreading the virus.“When people do come down with COVID, they may think it's allergies or a mild cold and not get tested so that predisposes them to spreading the disease even further,” said Dr. David Gonzales of Christus St. Vincent.David Gonzales said he's seen a fair number of tests among the vaccinated come back positive.“They're vaccinated, who are experiencing milder symptoms but they've been infected with the variant,” he said.And with the rise of the variant, hospitals are preparing for a potential surge.“We've really started to advance our planning stages and pull together our teams again and reinitiate all of the plans that we had in the past, bring those to the forefront and put those in place again,” Sandoval said.“The grouping that we formed at the beginning of the pandemic through the medical advisory team we continue to meet and we're increasing the frequency in which we meet,” said Dr. Denise Gonzales of Presbyterian Medical Group.She said her greatest concern is surrounding vaccine hesitancy because having mild symptoms of the virus is a lot different than having to be put on artificial life support.As of Friday, 148 people are hospitalized due to COVID statewide. That's up from 64 one month ago. A doctor at Presbyterian Hospital says 97% of those hospitalized due to COVID-19 are unvaccinated.