(Seguin) – In the midst of a historic winter storm, all eyes remained on efforts to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. That’s according to Patrick Pinder, the Guadalupe County emergency management officer. Pinder on Tuesday provided the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court with the latest breakdown on those efforts.
The first, of course, was on the hospitalizations of residents in the county specifically at Guadalupe Regional Medical Center.
“This hospital currently has 13 patients hospitalized for COVID. That number has gone down significantly over the last few weeks. It’s good news to see. Talking to them, they are not having as much issues over there. They have two people per day coming in for COVID and are admitted. That’s good news. That’s good to see. I’m thinking that the numbers since last week everybody stayed home with the winter weather, hopefully, that number will gone down and those hospital numbers will continue to fall. Their seven day average at the hospital is 16 people. So, they are seeing, over seven days, they are having about 16 people hospitalized so the number that is there now, currently, I’m assuming that it has gone down a little bit since last week’s,” said Pinder.
Pinder says the county has also been keeping tabs on the number of individuals who have lost their fight to COVID these last few weeks.
“The deaths reported to our county is 183. We’ve gone up a little bit on our death counts. Hopefully, when we get the state report, we can verify that detail and see where those jurisdictions have received those deaths. As of the last report that I presented to the court, there was 43 deaths that we didn’t know the location and the state also is not reporting some of those locations to us. So, we don’t know what cities they are from. The information is being withheld is what the DSHS report says. So, I don’t know why,” said Pinder.
With vaccine allocations being rolled out across the state, Pinder has also been including the latest data for the number of vaccines being received and administered county wide.
“We are in Week 11 so this is divided out by 11 weeks, 21,265 doses of the vaccine. Out of those doses, Guadalupe County has administered 18,830 of those doses. Out of those doses, the number of people that have received at least one vaccine or one shot is 13,660. People who have been fully vaccinated through our clinics in Guadalupe County is 5,170. The numbers that I present to the court are not necessarily Guadalupe County residents. When we do a shot clinic, those people have opportunities to sign up from all over. When we did the one here in Seguin, we had people from Laredo. We had people from Kerrville. We had people from down in the Valley, all kinds of different areas come through that site. So, family members that live here in Seguin, they signed those people up and got their family members up here so we are seeing the numbers coming in that we are starting to vaccinate people here but not all those are Guadalupe County residents. So, that’s why our plan that was submitted to the state was to continue to get vaccine allocations here. We want to continue to get, even if it’s a 1,000 week, so we can get those folks vaccinated,” said Pinder.
The numbers that Pinder noted did not include the county’s latest round of vaccines that were administered to residents on Thursday at the Seguin Coliseum.
This week, the county added 1,000 doses to its list for local vaccine clinics.
Those wishing to be added to a waitlist for a future COVID-19 vaccine are encouraged to signup for the waitlist at seguintexas.gov/covidvaccine. Those have questions are asked to call 830-303-9701 or email COVID19@co.guadalupe.tx.us.