Although the state’s COVID-19 positivity rate is in the red zone according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and cities like Austin are confronting potentially massive surges in coming weeks, Cameron County is maintaining a relatively low daily case rate — though not enough to let our guard down.
That’s according to county public health Administrator Esmeralda Guajardo, who said the county is at around 100 confirmed new cases a day. She believes a recent spike is connected to a “domino effect” from people who were infected over Thanksgiving and then went on to infect others. More telling than the dates new cases are reported is the date individuals are tested, Guajardo said. Sometimes it takes four or five days to get test reports from the healthcare providers doing the testing, she said.
“We saw a peak for Thanksgiving, four to seven days after Thanksgiving that people were going to doctors offices,” Guajardo said. “The week of Dec. 7 we had a pretty good number of people testing positive per day, but I do think that’s still part of the 14-day period after Thanksgiving.”
She expects the daily number of cases to begin falling gradually and said that, considering it’s the aftermath of a major holiday, roughly 100 cases a day is “not too bad, considering” but high nevertheless.
“We can’t afford for it to go much higher obviously,” Guajardo said. “As long as we’re staying steady and the hospitals are able to keep up with the number of cases, then we’re OK. It’s when the hospitals start hurting that we have a problem.”
During July and August, COVID-19 cases were so high in the county that hospitals were forced to transform additional areas into ICU space to handle the large number of very sick patients. Matt Lynch, spokesman for Valley Baptist Health System, said that as of Wednesday morning Valley Baptist Medical Center in Brownsville had 15 COVID-19 patients and seven persons under investigation pending lab results; five ICU beds available and ICU occupancy of 80 percent.
The chief nursing officer at VBMC Harlingen reported around 55 COVID-19 patients, three ICU beds available and 92 percent ICU occupancy, Lynch said, noting that the numbers are constantly changing.
“The numbers that I gave you for Brownsville could be different now as to when they were reported to me, and they will likely be completely different by the time you go to print — that’s how in flux they are throughout the day from moment to moment,” he said.
Guajardo said she thinks families are less inclined to gather in large numbers since the county was “maximally impacted” by the virus during the summer.
“That intimacy between families is what we struggle with,” she said. “Staying away from one another, it’s very difficult. … We’re seeing smaller groups. People are still getting together, but it’s getting close to home.”
With a potential mega-spreader Christmas fast approaching, Guajardo appealed for caution and restraint. Family members who plan to gather for the holidays should shelter in place for several days to avoid picking up the virus and unknowingly infecting loves ones, she said, though the safest option by far would be to stay apart this time around.
“Let’s just hold off a little longer,” Guajardo said. “The vaccine is around the corner. If people can do that we’ll be able to get through this.”
