Infected Numbers Keep Rising at the Bexar County Jail
Six More Deputies Test Positive
On Wednesday, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office announced that six more deputies had tested positive, bringing the total of infected deputies to 20. The Bexar County Jail is doing contact tracing to try to determine where these individuals caught the virus. During the daily briefing conducted by Judge Wolff and Mayor Nirenberg, Judge Wolff informed everyone that two more inmates had also tested positive, bringing the total number of infected inmates to 10. Nine of those 10 are in the jail’s infirmary and one is in the hospital. You can listen to Judge Wolff speak about this here starting at the 3 minute 47 second mark.
Currently Bexar County has 890 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the deaths have increased to 37. As of Wednesday, we are at 72% availability of ventilators and 44% availability of beds.
Contact Tracing Leads to Dispatcher
In more news from KSAT 12, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office released information today saying that the sick dispatcher taught a training class for the Alpha Class of cadets on March 31. It has been determined that the dispatcher was the one who infected the class leading to 13 of the 20 new deputies now testing positive for the virus. As we have said before, we lay this issues solely at the feet of Sheriff Salazar. Mayor Nirenberg announced the Public Health Emergency on March 2. Had Salazar taken safety measures at that time, things as simple as wearing masks and cutting down on class size, it’s highly probable that the majority of the officers, if not all, would not have gotten sick.
The dispatcher unknowingly contracted the virus from a family member. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “Most estimates of the incubation period for COVID-19 range from 1-14 days, most commonly around five days. These estimates will be updated as more data become available.” Even if the dispatcher went the full 14 days without knowing, had Sheriff Salazar instructed employees to wear mask when the Public Health Emergency was announced, it still would have been in place before the dispatcher was able to spread the disease.
PUBLIC SAFETY
Study Gives Troubling Results
A study was done on pregnant women and the results point to the number of people infected being much higher than we think it is. Columbia University Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian hospital tested every pregnant woman for COVID-19 who came into the medical center to deliver their babies from March 22 – April 4. The number of women tested was 215. Of those 215, four women were exhibiting signs of the coronavirus and did test positive for the disease. That’s less than 2% of the group which is about where we expect it to be. The concerning part was that an additional 29 tested positive but were not showing any signs. So the reality is that 33 of the 215 women were positive bringing the infection rate for the group to over 15%.
Though the women were not showing signs of being ill they would still have been shedding the virus, infecting others. This is why testing is so important and I can tell you, we’re failing. We are not doing the amount of testing that we should be. I know people are tired, frustrated, maybe facing financial issues and want to go back to work but this small study points to the situation being a lot more wide-spread than our numbers make it appear. It’s important that we don’t put ourselves right back in a hole by opening up too soon.
More Signs the Number are Too Low
ProPublica released an article that indicates we are under counting COVID-19 deaths. There has been a spike in, in-home deaths. The number of deaths attributed to COVID1-19 come from people who have been tested but no one is testing the bodies for the virus. Those deaths are not being counted in the total, even though the doctors are sure that’s what they died from, because there are no test results to verify the person was infected. Again, only people who have been tested and come back as positive are counted. According to Jack Gillum, senior reporter with ProPublica (posted on his Twitter account with the article), “* Boston-area at-home deaths up 20% * Detroit dead-body calls up 275% * NYC daily home deaths up 471%” Those are some serious increases.
As the article says, we’re just seeing “the tip of the iceberg.” Have patience with the stay at home orders. They are not an overreaction. We will get through this if we follow the medical instructions and take the necessary precautions.