(Seguin) — The mask wearing, social distancing and hand cleaning appear to be having a positive effect here in Seguin and Guadalupe County.
Seguin City Manager Steve Parker says many of the COVID-19 trends have been going down, and that’s good news as the community continues its fight against the spread of the virus.
Parker made the announcement during Tuesday’s meeting of the Seguin City Council.
“The message here tonight is whatever Seguin is doing — the trend is what we had hoped with the masks being implemented. The fact is the numbers are tending better. We have a weekly update with the hospital and after to talking with them (Tuesday) afternoon, those trends continue to move in a positive direction,” said Parker.
The positive case count and death rate do continue to grow, but it’s been harder to stay on top of these numbers, because of the backlog that was being experienced by the Texas Department of State Health Services. However, Parker says TDSHS has changed how it processes those numbers, in an attempt to get the best information out to the community.
“We are at 236 active cases in the county, and currently today, there were 14 hospitalized at GRMC. That number had been as many as over 40 at one time. The Guadalupe Regional Medical Center reported 31 deaths at their hospital. The state is showing 44 in Guadalupe County. The county (emergency management office) is actually getting reports from (the department of state health services) of 25 (deaths) . It’s just a delay in getting out the information related to where those deaths are — whether in Seguin, Schertz, (and) so forth. So there should be a catch up (in the numbers). But they’ve been reporting 44 on the (state’s) website for a couple of days now,” said Parker.
The hospitalization rate has also been coming down at GRMC. Parker says the hospital had more than 40 COVID-19 patients at one point this summer. He says that number has come down significantly over the last few weeks.
“We’ve been really trying to monitor (the numbers). We’ve talked about the consistency of the information. We are really trying to monitor how the hospital fairing. Looking at the seven-day rolling averages (of hospitalizations) is sort of what we have been tracking. At one point and time, they were seeing seven or eight new patients a day, or a seven-day rolling average. There are down to three patients (per day) on the seven day rolling average, and 19 patients overall on the seven-day rolling average for COVID patients. So overall, it’s positive news there,” said Parker.
Parker has been providing consistent updates to the council and to the community since the outbreak started back in the spring. He says what we are doing is having a positive impact, and people need to continue to wear their masks when they go out, practice social distancing, and make sure that the clean their hands often.