Tighter restrictions likely to return
Erath county officials reported 27 new COVID-19 cases in the report from Thursday night. Seventeen of these cases were residents within the city limits of Stephenville, one was from Dublin and nine were rural residents of the county.
These numbers bring the total cases since March to 1749.
There are 326 active cases in the County following a spike after the Tuesday night report included 60 positives, due in part to 35 positives which came back from the Nov. 9 mobile testing held in the county. Erath County Emergency Management Coordinator Susan Driskill reported that 51 of the 267 people tested were positive during the mobile testing event. (There were several that lived out of Erath County and re-tests on that day.)
Driskill also reported it was possible that occupancy at restaurants and other establishments would drop to 50% and bars would have to close again since the hospitals in our Trauma Service Area were more than 15% occupied for five consecutive days.
According to the Governor’s Executive Order 32, tighter restrictions are required in TSA that are over 15% for seven days. It is expected that these restrictions will return as TSA E (which includes Erath) was reported at 15.56% on Thursday, the seventh consecutive day. Restrictions will be eased after the seventh day of TSA hospitals being under 15% capacity.
Local Health Authorities Jeff Moore and Kelly Doggett also released an opinion on Thursday night that people testing positive should continue to quarantine for 14 days in spite of a statement by the CDC that allow for a shortened quarantine period of 10 days. In their statement, Moore and Doggett pointed to a note on the CDC site that read: “Any option to shorten quarantine risks bein less effective than the currently recommended 14-day quarantine.”
“It is our opinion that due to the high positivity rate and increasing number of cases along with the strain on our local hospital that cases of CDC defined close exposure in Erath County should continue to quarantine for 14 days,” the doctors said in the release. Dr. Joel Massey, Medical Director for Texas Department of State Health Services for our region, states DSHS is not currently recommending or endorsing shortening of quarantine using testing methods. We are in full agreement for this recommendation for Erath County, which is under the jurisdiction of Dr. Moore as a Local Health Authority.”