Hays County To Suspend Weekend COVID Reporting
Hays County Courthouse, San Marcos, TX – Due to a policy change in how labs report positive COVID-19 cases to the Hays County Local Health Department, the County will no longer post a weekend update of new positive cases.
“We’ve been informed that labs handling COVID-19 tests will no longer be sending our department updated cases on the weekends,” said Hays County Epidemiologist Eric Schneider. “With the few cases we receive directly from health care providers, we believe releasing weekend numbers would make our positive cases look artificially low. Therefore, our Monday reports will reflect any numbers reported to the Local Health Department over the weekend.”
Schneider is concerned that the public will mistake the low numbers for a decrease in positive cases, which could cause some people to stop wearing masks and social distancing.
“The virus is still alive and well in Hays County,” he said. “We are still strongly urging everyone to continue to engage in safe practices that will help us slow the spread of COVID-19.”
Among those practices are frequent hand washing, wearing masks and staying at least six feet away from others in public spaces.
The County will continue to share weekday updates Monday-Friday. The Dashboard on the County’s COVID web page will be updated Monday-Friday.
A COVID-19 Fact Sheet has been added to the County website: https://hayscountytx.com/covid-19-fact-sheet/. This document provides a glossary of terms and insight into methods and results calculations.
KVUE is currently running this report:
“Turning things around: Hays County officials attribute testing and education for lower case numbers — After a spike in June, Hays County worked to bring a significant increase in testing.”
Per the graphics, the “spike” had already hit before the testing blitz. However, the daily tests were already averaging about 250-ish per day. The peak was ID’d during a testing lull (145-ish on 19 June?). Then the average case count held steady for the typical 2-week period. As of Monday the case count was sitting at about half the peak.
Questions:
1. How many tests were actually done? It has a 7-day moving average. I’m thinking you could just add them up, but that seems to high.
2. Has anyone done an accounting to ensure that only people from Hays county are being counted against Hays County? The video interviewed a family that came up from New Braunfels because of the free testing.
3. How are these cases being cleared?
4. What was the average age of the positive tests?
5. What was the ratio of symptomatic to positive cases?
6. What is the average recovery time for the 5-24 year old segment?
7. When is San Marcos going to finally move to unrestricted openings (businesses, schools, churches, etc)?
8. What are they City Council’s statements regarding their latest Dictate considering the numbers were already well off the peak?