Coping with COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic situation is affecting many places in the county, some obvious and some not quite as obvious.

Country Meadows Clinic in Thorndale, which is testing the public for the disease, has recently installed a new testing booth at the facility.

Funerals, and all that’s associated with death and burial, are still continuing at Phillips & Luckey in Rockdale in a scaled-down format.

And the Milam County Jail has yet to record a COVID-19 case, thanks to an extensive screening and testing program.

CLINIC—Courtney Paulsen of Country Meadows said the facility has a new testing booth thanks to some help from the community.

She said Austin Woodson of Thorndale Lumber sold the lumber at cost with Jimmy and Kelly Brymer paying the difference.

Plexiglas protection was donated and cut by Floyd’s Glass Co. and labor was donated by Carter Brymer.

A photo on the front page of last week’s Reporter showed a Country Meadows medical assistant testing for COVID-19, through a vehicle window, in the parking lot.

Tests may also be arranged through HealthPoint Clinic in Rockdale, Scott & White Clinic-Cameron and from Rural Health Nurse Monette Schweitzer, available through Facebook.

FUNERALS—W h i le some recent obituaries have noted “services/memorials at a later date,” there have been funerals held at Phillips & Luckey.

“We’ve just been having them with a lot less people,” Wallace Jones, owner, told The Reporter.

“We are having funerals, with less people and some precautions,” Jones said.

Phillips & Luckey is doing that while adhering to the state and local public distancing guidelines.

“One of the things we’ve been doing is having visitations for family-only,” he said.

Another is to have a limited amount of persons at a funeral.

“When you put a few people in our big chapel and spread them out you can have people six to eight feet apart pretty easily,” Jones said. “That satisfies the distancing requirements.”

“People have been very cooperative,” he said. “They understand.”

JAIL—Outbreaks of COVID-19 in Texas jails have been in the headlines recently and the Texas Dept. of Public Safety has refused to accept any additional prisoners, as of this week leaving incarceration in the hands of county facilities.

“We have been okay,” Sheriff Chris White told The Reporter. “We actually started our screening program a month ago, so we got on top of it pretty quickly.”

White said prisoners are screened by taking temperatures and asking them pertinent questions to help determine if they are high-risk for having been exposed to the potentially deadly virus.

“If they are deemed high risk, they immediately go into quarantine for two weeks,” he said.

“We’ve found a couple with fevers, but that turned out to be due to allergies,” he said.

Milam is unique in that it also houses overflow prisoners for Coryell County, which contains part of Fort Hood.

“Coryell is also screening its prisoners,” White said.

White said the sheriff’s department is also keeping a close eye on jail employees and they, also, have been COVID-19-free to date.

“We’ve had a couple that appeared to have been exposed to someone who was high-risk,” White said. “Our staffers were then quarantined.”