COVID-19 Pandemic Top Story in 2020, DSHS Reports 185 COVID-19 Deaths in Maverick County
By: Ricardo E. Calderon, Eagle Pass Business Journal, Inc., Copyright 2020
The novel coronavirus pandemic, also known as COVID-19, has struck no country as devastating as the United States during 2020 with over 18,083,000 confirmed positive cases and over 320,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 as of Tuesday, December 22, 2020, becoming the top news story in 2020.
Eagle Pass and Maverick County, Texas is no exception as the U.S.-Mexico border community has been hit extremely hard by COVID-19 with 5,847 confirmed positive cases and 185 deaths from COVID-19 as of Tuesday, December 22, 2020, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), the official COVID-19 tracker in Texas.
The Maverick County Emergency Operation Center (EOC) reported on Monday, December 21, 2020 that a total of 33,209 people in Maverick County had been tested for COVID-19 with 5,847 confirmed positive cases, 27,235 negative results, 54 new confirmed positive cases, 127 pending results, 667active cases, a high positivity rate of 17.7%, 5,023 people have recovered, and 33 people hospitalized locally at Fort Duncan Regional Medical Center in Eagle Pass, Texas. The EOC reports a total of 157 deaths from COVID-19 in Maverick County, but DSHS reports 185 deaths, a difference of 28 additional deaths than local authorities.
Recent studies in the United States have shown that COVID-19 afflicted Americans as early as December of 2019, but exponentially spread in March of 2020 after originating in Wuhan, China during late 2019.
The lack of national leadership and strategy by President Donald Trump and his administration regarding the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the spread of the deadly virus across the United States, particularly minimizing the lethality of the virus so as not to affect Trump’s re-election campaign, reducing testing programs, and politicizing the response to the virus.
Without a national strategy, the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and territories of the United States were left to individually fend against the highly contagious coronavirus from infecting their citizens and causing havoc to their public health, economies, educational systems, and communities.
Despite having the leading public health and medical scientists to fight against infectious diseases, the United States stumbled in its response to the novel coronavirus and had to marshal its scientific prowess to develop multiple vaccines against the deadly virus in record-breaking time to attempt to slow or stop the continuing transmission of the virus among its citizens.
President Trump’s political strategy to minimize the deadly virus eventually backfired and led to his defeat in his bid for re-election in the November 3, 2020 general election, electing Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice-President of the United States. Biden and Harris will be sworn-in on January 20, 2021.
Despite losing the Presidency by 74 Electoral College votes and over 7 million popular votes, Trump has failed to accept defeat and concede having lost and has been meeting with Republican Congressional, State legislators, and political allies to overthrow the results of the national election, including the possibility of declaring martial law. Trump’s efforts to overthrow the will of American voters will fail and stain his legacy.
As the first Americans are beginning to receive vaccines against COVID-19 in December of 2020, there is renewed hope of American exceptionalism and ingenuity of slowing or stopping the spread of the lethal coronavirus and restoring America to a robust and vibrant society and economy once again as it has done in the past.
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