(Seguin) – Guadalupe County’s efforts have returned to protecting even more citizens against this recent increase in positive COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.
The latest data shared with members of the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court shows close to 300 active cases plus an increase in hospitalizations at Guadalupe Regional Medical Center. Patrick Pinder, the Guadalupe County Emergency Management Coordinator, says the numbers provided were as of Tuesday morning.
“Currently at GRMC as of this morning, they have 18 patients hospitalized – six of those are in the ICU, 10 are in the medical and two are in ED (emergency department). Their seven-day moving average is 14 patients and they are admitting three patients a day so that kind of gives you an idea of what the hospital is seeing there with their hospitalized patients,” said Pinder.
Pinder who started tracking the number of cases on July 12 says positive cases and hospitalizations are on the rise within the bounds of the county’s Trauma Service Area referred to as Area P. On July 12, he says it was at 3.79 percent. Now currently, the area is at 7.72 percent. Previously per the governor’s order, counties at 15 percent would be required to implement COVID protocols and procedures. However, he says those directives, if any, are not yet known at this time.
Guadalupe County Judge Kyle Kutscher says such an increase not only impacts COVID patients in our community but also those caring for them.
“What we are seeing as Patrick showed in that slide in the trauma service area that is the San Antonio Region that includes Guadalupe County is that it’s not just some far off place in the national news that’s talking about increased hospitalizations, we are seeing a direct correlation to this either variant or another rise and surge in COVID positive cases coming back to this local region, having more hospitalizations and every report that we are seeing is that over 90 and up to 95 percent of the people hospitalized are not vaccinated. I had my own questions, my own concerns about a lot of things that happened from the beginning of COVID, but the real situation becomes just like it was before. As a community and as a county, we have to be concerned about our available hospital staff, available nurses that is becoming more challenging to have enough people to care for patients and then just hospital capacity. So, right now, our local hospital has enough equipment and room to handle somewhere between 40 and 50 COVID patients. The problem is just like every other hospital in this region and in the state and this part of the country, they can only handle about 40 to 50 percent of that normal capacity because there is a lack of nurses to be able to care for those kinds of patients. So, you have hospitals that are all over this region, all over this state and some in other parts of the country because of the lack of nurses – having to send patients that are either more severe or just new patients with other illnesses to larger metropolitan areas for care because they don’t have the staff,” said Kutscher.
Pinder says the county wants to remind residents that vaccines are still available. He says the county is ensuring that anyone who wants one, knows how to get one.
“Some of the response that we are recommending is for those folks that are not vaccinated to go out and get vaccinated if they choose to. One of the things that we are also transitioning into is contacting the National Guard that came by last week and wanted to do some COVID vaccine clinics in Guadalupe County. The counties and the cities will not be doing those large-scale clinics. However, the National Guard will be stepping in to assist us with that, so we are currently looking at different locations throughout the community to have weeklong vaccine clinics in multiple areas of the county. Then, we’ve also looked at transitioning up to Staples, Kingsbury, some of these smaller communities for a little two-hour, three-hour clinic and be mobile for a day and see how that works out. Also, you are able to get your vaccine at your local pharmacies, the Walgreens, the CVS’s, the Walmarts. They all have vaccines available. We are also encouraging that people follow the CDC and DSHS guidelines as they start coming out. I think you’ll start seeing some of these guidelines coming out from these offices pretty soon,” said Pinder.
Kutscher says when it comes to staying safe and supporting those in the middle of the pandemic fight, he believes we all have a responsibility.
“The only way as a community, as individual citizens as us the county can support that effort to try to make that situation better is for those that are not vaccinated to seriously look at it, consider it, see if it’s the right decision for you to try to go get that vaccine and still be smart about when you are going and being around other people. I know there’s a lot more events going on right now. There’s funerals and we’ve heard tremendous numbers of situations where people went to large gatherings and 10 days later, that individual and 20 and 30 and 40 other people contracted COVID and then they are in the hospital or in a serious health condition so I know there are a lot of politics on both sides and people have taken a stance on this but we need to revisit this, continue to pull together, work as a community so that we don’t get right back into the same situation that we were before,” said Kutscher.
To help bring awareness to the issue, Kutscher says the county will reengage its regular meetings with the hospital, with school districts and with mayor groups to hopefully have a consistent message for all those in Seguin and Guadalupe County. He says the governor earlier this year limited the authority of local governments in their response to the virus. This includes the inability to impose mask mandates.