Coryell County continues to see spike in new active COVID-19 cases

By LYNETTE SOWELL

Cove Leader-Press 

Coryell County has now reached the point of an average of 47 new cases daily per 100,000 people as of Saturday, Nov. 28, according to the Brown University School of Public Health’s risk levels dashboard. 

The University’s School of Public Health takes the numbers from every county nationwide as reported and has been tracking the rate of the spread of the COVID-19 virus. 

The interactive map can be found online at https://globalepidemics.org/key-metrics-for-covid-suppression, and nationwide reflects that the majority of the United States is in the “red” risk zone. 

Although Coryell County has not updated its COVID-19 tracker since Nov. 20 as of press time Monday, numbers had reached 1,170 total, with 341 active cases as of Nov. 24, according to Coryell County Judge Roger Miller, when he updated the county commissioners on the COVID-19 outlook within Coryell county last week. Those numbers exclude the cases at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison units within the county. 

He called the numbers concerning, and was also concerned about the status of Coryell Health as well as other hospitals in the region. 

“As of Tuesday morning, if you start looking at the 1st of November, our weekly counts have been 66 in one week, 82 the following week, 131 last week, and from the 19th through the 24th, we’ve had 64 within that time period alone,” he added. Miller said that the numbers are based off the report from the Texas Department of State Health Services and run approximately seven days behind the actual testing date that he receives from Coryell Health. 

On Monday, Nov. 30, active cases of COVID-19 reached 195 within the city of Copperas Cove, with a total of 692 cases. That’s an overall increase of 11 active cases for the previous seven days with 50 additional cases overall, according to the weekly report issued by Copperas Cove Deputy Fire Chief/Emergency Management Coordinator Gary Young. 

Young said that the report only includes cases released by the state as of Nov. 25, prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. 

Then on Monday afternoon, Young issued another report which included additional numbers from the state, bumping the overall total number of cases within Copperas Cove to 728, with 231 of those cases being considered active as of Monday. 

Compared to last Monday, Nov. 22, the active casss increased by 47, and total number increased by 86 wtihin one week.

Schools in the Copperas Cove Independent School District reopened yesterday after the Thanksgiving break, after being closed since the end of classes on Nov. 20, which is also the last date CCISD updated its active case tracker, which at that time reflected a total of 39 active cases district wide, to include 22 students and 17 staff. The half of the district’s active cases at that time were at Copperas Cove High School, with a total of 15 students and 4 staff. 

Last Tuesday, the state of Texas saw its largest one-day increase in new positive cases, with 13,998 new cases. 

Active cases have risen to 184,035 in the state of Texas, out of a total of 1,157,273 positive cases. So far, there have been 21,357 fatalities in the state. 

The seven-day positivity rate is 9.4 percent, meaning the average of those testing positive for COVID-19 is 9.4 percent out of all tests conducted in the past seven days. 

Hospitalizations statewide are at 13.69 percent of all hospitalizations, at 8,634. Locally, in Trauma Service Region L, there are 88 hospitalized for COVID-19 out of a total of 1,306 presently hospitalized, or 6.74 percent. 

In Lampasas County, the latest update from Lampasas Mayor Misti Talbert as of Nov. 24 reflected a total of 555 cases, with 67 active cases. Two county residents were hospitalized, one of whom is an individual under age 18 in the ICU of a local hospital.