Download & Print
June 22, 2020
State changes CoViD-19 reporting
By Jessica Nohealapa'ahi Goode
The Bandera Prophet
The state has changed how it reports the number of active CoViD-19 cases, which made many county totals jump higher overnight. Previously, the Department of State Health Services only included patients who tested positive and showed symptoms as active; now, all cases - symptomatic, recovered, presumed positive and under investigation are included in the tally.
“The state thinks this will show a better picture of the trends,” Bandera County Emergency Coordinator Carey Reed said, adding in Bandera County, only one patient is showing mild symptoms - the remaining eight people who have tested positive for the virus have recovered (the state dashboard shows 15 active cases - meaning six are under investigation).
The state will no longer send individual counties detailed information regarding who has recovered and who can be released from the active category. Reed said hundreds of new positive cases have recently been confirmed in other Texas counties, including Bexar County, and the state is struggling to keep up.
The problem with the new reporting, Reed said, is “since the total number is cumulative, they may add cases and delete cases and we won’t know which cases the total consists of.”
Further, the state will no longer send addresses to flag in the county’s dispatch system, so if a patient has a complication, emergency workers won’t know if it’s a CoViD case or not - which means every 911 call will have to be treated as a potential CoViD case.
Reed said the good news is most of the new cases have zero or mild symptoms, and hospitalizations overall have decreased, even though the number of positive cases has increased. She said she can try to continue to track and monitor individual patients who test positive by contacting them directly.
To follow the DSHS website active case county, go to https://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/ed483ecd702b4298ab01e8b9cafc8b83.
“Or you can go to www.banderacounty.org and look for COVID-19-Texas Case Counts,” Reed said. “That website is updated every day. It shows total, fatalities, recoveries and active cases by county.”
“The state thinks this will show a better picture of the trends,” Bandera County Emergency Coordinator Carey Reed said, adding in Bandera County, only one patient is showing mild symptoms - the remaining eight people who have tested positive for the virus have recovered (the state dashboard shows 15 active cases - meaning six are under investigation).
The state will no longer send individual counties detailed information regarding who has recovered and who can be released from the active category. Reed said hundreds of new positive cases have recently been confirmed in other Texas counties, including Bexar County, and the state is struggling to keep up.
The problem with the new reporting, Reed said, is “since the total number is cumulative, they may add cases and delete cases and we won’t know which cases the total consists of.”
Further, the state will no longer send addresses to flag in the county’s dispatch system, so if a patient has a complication, emergency workers won’t know if it’s a CoViD case or not - which means every 911 call will have to be treated as a potential CoViD case.
Reed said the good news is most of the new cases have zero or mild symptoms, and hospitalizations overall have decreased, even though the number of positive cases has increased. She said she can try to continue to track and monitor individual patients who test positive by contacting them directly.
To follow the DSHS website active case county, go to https://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/ed483ecd702b4298ab01e8b9cafc8b83.
“Or you can go to www.banderacounty.org and look for COVID-19-Texas Case Counts,” Reed said. “That website is updated every day. It shows total, fatalities, recoveries and active cases by county.”