Maverick County Surges With 64 Positive COVID-19 Cases, Raising Total to 519 Cases
By: Ricardo E. Calderon, Eagle Pass Business Journal, Inc., Copyright 2020
Maverick County like the State of Texas and United States is in the midst of a surge of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases since the Memorial Day weekend in late-May 2020, but particularly the past month of June.
Maverick County Judge David R. Saucedo reported at the Eagle Pass and Maverick County Emergency Operations Center press conference on Thursday, July 2, 2020, that 64 new confirmed positive COVID-19 cases in Maverick County were announced by the Texas Department of State Health Services, raising the total number to 519 cases.
Judge Saucedo stated that 6,662 people in Maverick County have been administered a COVID-19 test as of July 2, 2020 with 5,155 negative results, 519 positive results, 988 waiting for test results, 183 have recovered, 331 active cases, 24 are hospitalized, and the positivity rate increased to 7.8 percent.
Judge Saucedo added that a total of 25 people are currently hospitalized at the Fort Duncan Regional Medical Center, the sole hospital in the community, with six people in the Intensive Care Unit on ventilators, 13 positive and three pending test results on the Medical Floor, totaling 16, and another three people in the Emergency Room pending test results.
Fort Duncan Regional Medical Center’s Intensive Care Unit Director Dr. Sergio Zamora has previously stated that the local hospital has 10 Intensive Care Beds with 14 to 16 ventilators. The significant increase of COVID-19 patients to 25 people is close to overwhelming the local hospital’s health care services, if it has not done so yet.
The week of June 29 through July 2, 2020 has seen the highest record of fatalities due to COVID-19 in Maverick County with three, bringing the total to five fatalities to date, the highest number of positive COVID-19 cases with 193, bringing the total to 519 cases, and the highest number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 with 25. These figures are only for four days of the week with Friday, July 3, results pending as of press time. This week has definitely been the worst in Maverick County since the novel coronavirus pandemic started.
Texas also experienced its worst week with record number of positive COVID-19 infections with 7,915 cases on July 2, 2020, bringing 44,060 cases for the four days week to date and the overall total to 175,977 positive cases; 229 Texans died due to COVID-19, bringing the overall total to 2,525; 7,382 Texans are hospitalized with COVID-19; 90,720 Texans have recovered from COVID-19; and 1,975,803 Texans have had the COVID-19 test administered and another 198,745 have had an antibody test.
Texas has skyrocketed with positive COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations this week that finally Governor Greg Abbott buckled-in to reality after holding out to please President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party ordering mandatory face mask use in public for most counties and issuing new regulations limiting gatherings to 10 or less. Governor Abbott has been severely criticized by public health experts and health care providers for reopening Texas pre-maturely on April 29, 2020 that has eventually led to the current surge of the deadly virus.
Nationally, the United States reported its highest single day number of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases with 56,015 on Thursday, July 2, 2020, according to NBC News. Overall, the United States now has a total of 2,758,800 confirmed positive COVID-19 cases and 128,800 deaths related to COVID-19 as of July 2, 2020, according to the New York Times.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the leading immunologist in the United States, testified before Congress that if Americans do not wear face masks and practice social distancing guidelines from the CDC the total number of cases per day might reach as high as 100,000. Dr. Fauci, however, that this does not have to be this way if only Americans followed the CDC guidelines of wearing a face mask, social distancing (6 feet), wash hands regularly, use hand sanitizer, avoid gatherings of 10 or more people, limit travel to essential matters, and stay home to save lives.
