With the omicron variant of COVID-19 still spreading rapidly throughout the county, state and nation, the Kendall County officials are working to set up a county testing facility and to put on more vaccination drives.
Active cases in Kendall County soared to all-time highs over the past week, nearly tripling the county’s previous 213-case record on Friday morning as active cases reached 611, when the Texas Department of State Health Services changed its COVID-19 data dashboard for the state. The change no longer provides active or recovered cases – a change Kendall County Emergency Management Coordinator Jeff Fincke said has made it much more difficult for counties to track data.
Fincke said an email has been sent to the state health services department to figure out what changes are expected and what the plan is for data reporting at the county level. There has been some debate as to what numbers best represent the state of the pandemic, wavering between active cases, hospitalization rates and recoveries, but Fincke said the newest variant quickly making its way through the nation is less deadly than previous variants. So, hospitalization rates are much lower and disproportionate to the number of cases cropping up in the county.
“Hospitalizations are still remaining relatively low,” Fincke said. “So, this variant is more infectious, but the death rate is not as prevalent or as high. And the recovery time seems to be a little less time than the other variants. They’re (public health officials) saying after five to seven days, a lot of people with this variant (omicron) are no longer infectious. So, they’re saying after five or seven days, you can actually come back to work whereas before it was actually 12 to 14 days.”
While hospitalizations remain low, preventing the spread of COVID-19 already has impacted several county and city functions. Several trial cases heard during the 451st District Court’s final pretrial hearings on Friday were pushed back because an officer assigned to the cases contracted COVID-19. At the Boerne Planning and Zoning Commission meeting left only four planners on the dais to vote on important matters in the city as three of the planners either tested positive for the virus or had a family member test positive.
As hordes of residents filled the Boerne City Hall council chambers last Monday, city staff and officials urged residents to utilize other rooms in city hall to live stream to allow the audience to social distance.
While the current DHS dashboard has removed the tab showing active and recovered cases, Fincke estimated there were roughly about 600 active cases in the county based on information from the state dashboard and other sources he had access to. However, the active case reports to the state have proven to be challenging to confirm, as home testing has increased in popularity, with kits running out at several local pharmacies.
At the beginning of the year, Gov. Greg Abbott requested federal support for more testing sites and to add medical personnel to support hospitals in Texas cities and additional allocations of monoclonal antibody treatments – Sotrovimab and Bamlanivimab. The request, issued through the Texas Division of Emergency Management and DHS, asked that the Federal Emergency Management Agency provide testing sites in Bexar, Cameron, Dallas, Harris, Hidalgo and Tarrant counties, citing COVID-19 metrics like positivity rates and hospitalizations as reason for the request.
“Detecting COVID-19 and preventing COVID-related hospitalizations are critical to our fight against this virus,” Abbott said. “While the Biden administration has cut supplies of monoclonal antibody treatments and testing kits when they are needed most, the state of Texas is urging the federal government to step up in this fight and provide the resources necessary to help protect Texans. Testing sites, additional medical staff, and continued shipments of therapeutics from the federal government will help us continue to save lives and mitigate the spread of COVID-19.”
At the county level, Fincke said he and other county officials have been working with a company to set up a county-hosted testing site, but the development is still in the planning stages. Fincke said county officials will conduct another vaccination drive, but they are currently working to get vaccines and kits to conduct another drive.
The city of Boerne does not have any set plans to host a vaccination drive, and Boerne Communications Director Chris Shadrock said residents in the city should contact local providers in Boerne, saying last week that there was plenty of availability to schedule appointments for those seeking a COVID-19 vaccine.
According to the DHS COVID-19 dashboard, Monday’s case count was 43,374 confirmed cases and 6,777 new probable cases in Texas. During the first two weeks of 2022, there have been 783 new confirmed and probable cases in Kendall County, with 547 confirmed and 236 probable.
In the first two weeks of this year, case numbers have reached 19 percent of the total amount of 2021 cases and 42 percent of cases confirmed in 2020 in Kendall County.
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