CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — With coronavirus related hospitalizations on the rise in the Coastal Bend, city-county officials met with the Texas A&M Corpus Christi Coronavirus Task Force to highlight another spike in coronavirus cases.
Hospitals may need to prepare for a surge in patients. Nueces County officials have reported its biggest week of cases with added 3 deaths.
"The current rate this virus is spreading in our community is too high and will cause our hospitals to quickly be inundated," Public Health Director Annette Rodriguez said.
Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. Ramachandruni said it's important to recognize coronavirus symptoms right away so treatment can start immediately. As with most things -- the sooner the better.
Dr. Chris Bird with the task force said the Coastal Bend is in its third wave of the virus, referring to it as a tsunami.
"This is the third wave; it's bigger than the other waves that we've encountered thus far," Dr. Bird said.
He added that the virus doesn't care what age group it affects. All age groups are becoming infected.
"Everybody's increasing, not just people that are 20 to 39, people that are 40 to 59, people that are 50-79, people that are older 80 and people that are zero to 19," Dr. Bird said.
What makes this wave more dangerous than the first two, is it's widespread across an entire state.
"San Antonio has the newest cases per day followed by Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, and then Nueces is a distant fourth place from them," Dr. Bird said. "It's not just a localized outbreak. It's everywhere -- and it's not just in South Texas, it's over most of Texas."
There's a reason you're hearing more conversations about the push to wear face masks.
"After a month total starting with just one infected can get up to 121 people infected on average with that high transmission rate," Dr. Bird said.
Due to the cases increasing rapidly -- city-county officials said they will be providing updated coronavirus cases on the weekends again.
For the latest updates on coronavirus in the Coastal Bend, click here.
More from 3News on KIIITV.com: