NUECES COUNTY, Texas — Two weeks ago our state was averaging about 64,000 daily tests for the coronavirus, but then the average daily testing dropped to about 35,000. At the same time, the percentage of positive tests went up by 25-percent.
Now, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is having state health officials to investigate the trend because he had said at one time that anything over 10-percent would be considered a red flag.
Our COVID daily update numbers for August 13 show that we had 169 new cases, but the director of our health department Annette Rodriguez said that only 57 out of the 169 came from local testing conducted Thursday.
The rest of the positive tests were sent down from state contact tracing teams. Another data dump that is helping to skew our numbers and confuse everyone involved in trying to accurately track our COVID-19 numbers.
"It’s frustrating us and it’s also frustrating to the community because we want to be transparent," Rodriguez said.
Since Sunday, the state has been adding hundreds of positive test results each day to our daily totals. Those numbers aren’t always from any recent testing. That’s because the state can’t keep up with the overwhelming numbers of positive tests and is playing catch up.
"We want to give people good numbers; we want to know what’s going on so we know are we coming down on the wave or we going up on a second wave where are we what do we need to do how can we stay safe," Rodriguez said.
She added that she wishes the state would get out of the contact tracing business. She feels her department would be able to produce a more accurate daily count.
"I feel like that if we’re doing it ourselves we have ownership of it we have responsibility for it," Rodriguez said.
She said that the state's daily data dumps are causing people to question everything about the numbers we are seeing because right now they’re simply not accurate.
Those positive test results are from different periods of time and have left a lot of people confused about what our real numbers are right now.
Everyone from the health officials to one of our State Representatives are hoping that it can all get cleared up.
Health Director Annette Rodriguez said that this week’s state data dump of hundreds of positive COVID-19 tests came from results as far back as April. She said it’s very difficult for her and her staff to try and make sense of the numbers as they relate to our tracking of the virus.
"I think everybody is frustrated at this point because we can’t tell the difference; they give them to us all together so it’s hard to detangle them," Rodriguez said.
The reason for the data dump is that state contact tracers can't keep up with all of the positive tests that have been pouring in over the past few months. State Representative Todd Hunter promises to try to get it all straightened out.
"What you’re doing is, you’ve got a data misinformation, which is correct, versus what were the real new cases," Hunter said.
Even though there’s a lot of confusion about our numbers, Rodriguez is confident in her belief that our positive test results are on the way down.
"I do know what we have locally and our numbers are very low," Rodriguez said. "I think today we may have had 10 and then we had another data dump so our numbers are coming down, but it’s slow. It’s a progression. We all know that they could go up anytime, so everybody needs to continue to do what they need to do.”
Rodriguez added that the number of calls to the department’s COVID-19 phone bank was above 30,000 last month and right now they’re at nearly 14,000.
While those call numbers are encouraging, our positivity rate is not. She says it’s around 28-percent. Rodriguez said that number would have to be down to around 5-percent before she would agree that children should be allowed to go back into our classrooms.
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