NUECES COUNTY, Texas — A sobering coronavirus update from the city-county health district as they announce about 20,000 people in Nueces County are under quarantine right now, as a precaution
While health professionals tell us the number of positive cases for the county seems to be going down each day, numbers are still high enough to not only produce hundreds of positive tests, but when the contact tracing is done those numbers have mushroomed to at least 20,000 people having been exposed.
"I think in two days we have quarantined almost 20,000 people and I was thinking two weeks just think about it we had 600 people who were actually positive," Health Director Annette Rodriguez said.
She speculated that one reason the numbers seem to be trending down now is that so many people are self quarantined.
Many of our local coronavirus cases have been traced to people who were at bars and clubs before they were shut down.
On June 26, Texas Governor Greg Abbott decided to shut those establishments back down and scaling back restaurant capacity to 50-percent. The governor has not indicated when bars will be allowed to reopen.
Bars are not the only places that remain on lockdown. Beaches in Nueces County are still closed off to vehicle access until at least August 17.
Those restrictions were renewed last Friday by county commissioners as a means to combat the COVID spread in the Coastal Bend. They hope it discourages people from traveling here from other parts of the state. The restrictions are not very popular as one man has filed a lawsuit against Nueces County for restricting beach access.