Three More Maverick County Citizens Die from COVID-19 and Record New Confirmed Positive Cases Reported
By: Ricardo E. Calderon, Eagle Pass Business Journal, Inc., Copyright 2022
The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) announced on Saturday, January 22, 2022, that three additional Maverick County citizens died from COVID-19 and a record number of 364 new confirmed positive cases were reported in Maverick County on Saturday, January 22, bringing the cumulative total to 424 fatalities (deaths) and 17,657 positive cases since the pandemic started in 2020.
A day earlier, January 21, a record number of 461 new confirmed positive COVID-19 cases were reported in Maverick County, suggesting there is a significant increase of COVID-19 transmissibility within the community in light of the Omicron variant surge. The 461 new confirmed positive cases is the highest daily number of cases reported in Maverick County since the pandemic began in 2020.
Local public officials have downplayed the Omicron variant surge to the public by dismissing it as having milder symptoms than the Delta variant, but the total number of new confirmed positive cases clearly demonstrates that the Omicron variant is spreading like wildfire within the community and the number of fatalities follows only within a matter of weeks.
Since January 1, 2022 to January 22, there have been a total of 4,818 new confirmed positive COVID-19 cases and eight (8) fatalities in Maverick County.
On Thursday, January 20, 2022, Maverick County Judge David R. Saucedo reported a total of 18 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 at he Fort Duncan Regional Medical Center in Eagle Pass and four of them in the Intensive Care Unit, three of which were unvaccinated. The Omicron variant is extremely more transmissible than previous variants of the coronavirus, infecting a larger number of people and with the larger number of infections comes the increase of fatalities.
All Maverick County citizens are highly encouraged to get vaccinated and boosted to protect themselves and their families and friends. Booster shots have shown that they protect people with Omicron from being hospitalized or not passing away from it, according to CDC.
Texas, too, is experiencing an Omicron variant surge with 120,106 new confirmed positive COVID-19 cases and 198 fatalities reported on Friday, January 21, 2022 and another 60,393 new positive cases and 159 fatalities on Saturday, January 22, bringing the cumulative total to 5,905,609 positive cases and topping 78,055 fatalities on January 22.
