Maverick County Reports One COVID-19 Death and 91 Confirmed Positive Cases, Raising Total Deaths to Six and 641 Positive Cases
By: Ricardo E. Calderon, Eagle Pass Business Journal, Inc., Copyright 2020
Like the State of Texas and the United States, Maverick County is experiencing exponential growth of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, record number of hospitalized people due to COVID-19, and record number of deaths related to COVID-19.
Eagle Pass Mayor Luis E. Sifuentes and Maverick County Judge David R. Saucedo announced at the Eagle Pass/Maverick County Emergency Operations Center press conference on Monday, July 6, 2020, that another resident of Maverick County had died over the weekend due to COVID-19, totaling six overall, and 91 new confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, totaling 641 overall, and a record 34 people are hospitalized due to COVID-19.
Mayor Sifuentes lamented the death of another local citizen of Maverick County due to COVID-19 and offered his deepest condolences to the family of the deceased person.
Sifuentes stated a total of 7,003 people in Maverick County have been administered the COVID-19 test with 641 positive results, 5,835 negative results, 527 waiting for test results, 406 active cases, 229 recovered people, 34 hospitalized people due to COVID-19, six fatalities, and the positivity rate increased to 9.1 percent.
Sifuentes noted that a record number of 34 people are currently hospitalized due to COVID-19 at the Fort Duncan Regional Medical Center with four in the Intensive Care Unit, which three of the four are on ventilators, 18 positive patients are on the Medical Floor and five patients are waiting for their test results, and another three positive patients are in the Emergency Room and another four patients are waiting for their test results.
Although Sifuentes did not expressly say this, it is common knowledge that the Fort Duncan Regional Medical Center is at maximum capacity or close to maximum capacity based on previous statements made by Dr. Sergio Zamora or representatives of the medical center in the past concerning its number of beds available for COVID-19 patients. Once the maximum capacity is reached, the local hospital’s health care services will become overwhelmed by the rising number of hospitalized patients.
Maverick County Officials, health care providers, and public health experts need to immediately develop and design a contingency plan of where to treat patients in the event the local medical center becomes overwhelmed. For instance, could excess COVID-19 patients be treated at a temporary medical facility at the City of Eagle Pass International Center for Trade or any other facility as well as acquiring the medical equipment and health care personnel necessary to operate such a facility. Since a shortage of health care personnel exists in Maverick County, could the National Guard or United States Military provide the health care personnel necessary to operate such a facility. Also, does Maverick County have the necessary supply of medications to treat its COVID-19 patients.
A former Maverick County Hospital District Board of Trustee repeatedly admonished the community to save its reserve funds for use in the event of a public health emergency such as a pandemic. Behold, the contingency is before the community now in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic.
One bright news announced was that State Representative Poncho Nevarez had spoken with Governor Gregg Abbott or his representatives to solicit supplying the local medical center with additional COVID-19 drug called Remdesivir. Nevarez was successful in obtaining an additional supply of this key drug used to treat COVID-19 patients.
Texas is experiencing an exponential growth of COVID-19 positive cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities since the Memorial Day holiday in late-May 2020, but particularly in the past 30 days as the numbers have doubled.
Texas reported surpassing the 200,000 plateau of positive COVID-19 cases on Sunday, July 5, 2020, with 5,318 new cases, bringing the total to 200,557 positive cases. Also, Texas reported having 8,700 people hospitalized with COVID-19 as of July 5, 2020, doubling the total number of hospitalized patients in just two weeks. Texas reported another 18 people dying from COVID-19 on July 5, bringing the total of deaths due to COVID-19 to 2,655 Texans.
Nationally, 34 states are surging with record number of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases with a record of 2,958,000 total cases and 130,332 deaths related to COVID-19 as of July 5, 2020, according to the New York Times. In just the first week of July 2020, the United States had almost 300,000 new COVID-19 cases. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that unlike Europe, “we never came down to baseline and now are surging back up.”
Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned upside down the whole world and these are not normal times that we are living today. Extraordinary times require extraordinary leadership and decisions full of creativity and imagination while throwing out the normal set of rules prior to the pandemic.
