More and more new cases pour in; 4 hospitalized

Medina County cases are on the rise, as is the greater SA area, and hospital systems in Bexar County are getting overwhelmed.

“We have seen a really big uptick here and our numbers are continuing to come in,” Judge Chris Schuchart said.

While there are some delays in reporting when people are tested outside the county, there is a constant inflow of new patients who are actively sick in our county.

“We have seen businesses affected in our local communities, some that were never able to re-open because so many of their staff had been affected. Many businesses are using masks and doing everything they can now, realizing that if they have one or two more employees test positive, they won’t be able to operate. That’s the reality. We want our businesses to be able to stay open, but employers are being hit hard right now. For that reason, we are going to ask all businesses in Medina County to ask everyone to wear a mask and follow social distancing measures.”

Unfortunately, with many people and businesses, Patricia Mechler adds, “”It seems like it has to affect somebody they know before they want to do something about it.”

Above are Medina County case count from June 29th.
Medina County case count from June 17th.
Zoom in to see these deals or tap for more from Chaparral Ford!

As a community, “We need to be doing a lot more to slow this down. We need to start social distancing and stop social gatherings,” Mechler adds. “Our SA area hospitals are being hit hard. People inside businesses need to be putting their masks on. Many of our local residents work in Bexar County. Our working class is being hit the hardest right now.”

“Many cases of COVID are mild, but there are many that are not mild. There are people having to be hospitalized who are younger, too,” said Mechler.

With so many new coronavirus cases in Texas, Mechler and the Medina County Health Unit team is now investigating and beginning contact tracing ahead of the State.

“The state has over 600 pending cases in Texas,” Mechler said. “So we are doing everything we can to begin investigations right away when we get a positive test result from a test taken in our community. In those cases, that test local, I can start working them up today. If I have to wait for those test results to get sent to the Region office and come back to me, it could be a week or more before I have those names. ”

Simply put, there are more cases that need to be investigated and tracked than the State can handle right now.

While it is hard to investigate cases and break them down into zip codes right away, officials want to assure everyone that there are many active cases.

“This is the most active cases that we’ve ever had at one time,” confirms Emergency Manager Keith Lutz.

“It is also getting harder to get tested, and taking longer to get the results because the labs are also overloaded,” Lutz said.

Community Care facility

Two more residents at Community Care nursing home in Hondo have tested positive, and both are hospitalized. According to Lutz, they will be testing the entire facility again.

Testing swabs running low, results running long

Many local clinics are running low on COVID swabs, and results are taking longer and longer to come back in many cases.  It is also taking days for residents who want a test, to get tested in many cases.

54 active cases in Medina County

On Monday, June 29th, Medina County reported another 27 cases added to the “pending investigation” line. There are now a total of 40 pending investigations going on along with the other active cases that have already been broken down by zip code. So there are a total of 54 active cases in our local communities in Medina County at this time. Authorities are working to track down and investigate the new cases and break them down by zip code, but are overwhelmed.
There are also four local patients who were admitted to the hospital recently.

On June 26th, fourteen cases were added to the active case counts with the following zip codes:

3 cases for 78059 zip code, community spread

2 cases for 78009 zip code community spread and close contact

6 cases for 78016, close contact

1  probable case for 78016 zip code, close contact

2 cases for 78861 zip code, community spread and close contact

1 case for 78056 zip code,  close contact

13  cases were also “pending investigation” on that date (no zip codes assigned yet).

On June 24th, 9 active cases were added (7 in the 78016 area with 4 from community transmission, and 2 in 78009 area with one being community transmission).

At that time, there were 14  cases “pending investigation” (no zip codes yet).

Two weeks ago, on June 17th, we had only 6 active cases in the whole county, and two in Devine which has seen the largest jump in the past two weeks.

Medina County did not release an updated number of cases on press day, June 30th for unknown reasons.

By Kayleen Holder

THE DEVINE NEWS

Editor