CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Wednesday the coronavirus death count nationally is the highest it's been in six months more than 17 hundred in just one day.
According to the CDC COVID-19 cases are up 29 percent since last week and the trend is for even higher numbers in the days ahead, but how does it all compare to what we're seeing here in the Coastal Bend?
“There was a very large group of people that are working on this,” said Dr. Chris Bird with the Texas A&M University Coronavirus Task Force.
The first Texas Coastal Bend COVID-19 pandemic report from the task force was on April 10.
“It looks like this; we have 89 laboratory based confirmed positive tests in the coastal bend area. We have a heat map here in the coastal bend area, don’t miss the two over there in Aransas. I thought there was an error in the graph earlier but it’s too hard to see over there. You can see there's a pretty steady increase,” said Dr. Bird during a pandemic report.
It would be the first of many presentations that would report on the progression of the pandemic. March, April and part of May showed a slow but steady increase in cases.
Then came Memorial Day many communities opened beaches with limited access, but still crowds flocked to the coast.
“As we gave seen, they're going up especially the last week or so today this will be the first time we report a two hundred number,” said City Manager Peter Zanoni a few weeks after Memorial Day. “So, we have 215 confirmed new cases today that follows the 71 from yesterday and 109 from the day before."
In that presentation Zanoni would announce those numbers would put Nueces County, over the thousand-mark case load.
Another milestone in the pandemic, another surge after the July fourth holiday and during Tropical Storm Hanna seeing some of the highest numbers.
At that point more than 96-hundred people had tested positive. One month later, August 25 there was more bad news.
“We have another surge event going on we have detention center near Robstown that has an outbreak situation going on it started last week,” said Peter Zanoni.
60 days went by and the number of infections in Nueces County continued to climb. City County Health Director Annette Rodriguez called out the data.
“You see six cases and then it jumps up to 38 cases, 33, 39 it comes down to 11 and then 12. 19, 20, 25,27, 38, 41,” said Rodriguez.
The total number of cases on October 27 was 21,209 in Nueces County.
Fast forward to November 17 when the city county gave the latest coronavirus update.
“With this transmission rate, if we continue along the same path, which we probably will unless we change our behaviors,” said Dr. Bird
Graphs show what our COVID-19 numbers look like here in Nueces County. Since March we have had over 22,300 COVID cases. Nearly 21,000 of those people recovered.
We now have over 900 active cases and just over 460 deaths. The city county task force reports that daily hospitalization numbers are on the rise. Graphs show that just 10 days ago that number hovered in the 60’s. Now we’re over 100 a day and the number of COVID ICU patients has also risen from around 20 to now 30 each day. Over the last two weeks we’ve seen more people dying with 14 people losing their lives to COVID-19.
“We are obviously going to need to understand that holiday gatherings can take that curve and really bring it up another notch if we can keep where we are right now Michael keep that level and continue to drive it down I mean that’s what’s needed,” said Nueces County Judge Barbara Canales.
Nueces County Judge Barbara Canales talking about the COVID-19 task force’s prediction that we are headed for the biggest surge in COVID-19 numbers that we’ve seen.
A comparison graph shows the July and December time periods. The task force believes right now we are at the beginning of the second wave with our COVID numbers looking similar to what they did back in mid-June just before the July surge. That COVID-19 outbreak is supposed to peak at around Christmas time.
“I am concerned because we have a baseline that’s at 100 people in the hospital if we have the surge it doesn’t start down here it starts from here and builds up” said Judge Canales. “And so I’ve got to ask for of course you know our faith to keep us strong in our hope and optimism for the vaccine to be at our side but we need action from the citizens who say that’s not a good idea right now I can’t do that.”
The task force power point presentation shows here that our transmission rate is at 1.8. That means for everyone that is infected they get an additional 1 to 2 people infected. Now there is some good news on the treatment front. The first shipment of a new antibody therapy has arrived in town.
“So, Bamlanivimab, is the new antibody drug we have received 38 doses the drug I believe is all located at Christus Spohn Shoreline,” said Judge Canales.
The new antibody therapy is to treat COVID-19 patients who have mild to moderate symptoms. It’s designed for patients 12 years of age and older. High on the dosing priority list are those folks who are 65 years of age or older and have certain chronic medical conditions that could result in hospitalization.
For the latest updates on coronavirus in the Coastal Bend, click here.
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