As it has become increasingly obvious, the battle against COVID-19 is a marathon, not a mile run, Rockdale and Milam County residents are becoming used to their new routines.
Some of the week’s developments:
• It looks like school classes are over for 2019- 2020. That decision won’t be made until later this month but County Judge Steve Young told commissioners on Monday it looked “inevitable” and the district has issued guidelines for determining honor graduates if that happens. (See page 6A.)
• The pace of new cases in Milam slowed down during the week after quickly going from two to seven the previous week. At midweek it’s at eight after a new positive test was confirmed Saturday.
• Young answered questions from the public on Thursday and expressed concerns about persons still being able to go into restaurants to pick up to-go orders. The judge said he has the authority to close restaurants and would do so if the practice did not stop.
SCHOOLS—On Sunday, Gov. Greg Abbott extended the statewide Shelter-In-Place order by a month, taking it to mid-May.
Final day of classes in the Rockdale ISD was to be May 28. Young told county commissioners, meeting by phone conference, he would meet later with superintendents to discuss the length schools would be shut down.
“But it (closing for the rest of the school year) looks to be a foregone conclusion,” he said.
Also Monday the Rockdale ISD released COVID-19 grading guidelines which included provisions in case school did not resume this semester.
Those guidelines include procedures for determining valedictorian and salutatorian. Those GPAs will be calculated based on scores through the first semester of 2019-20.
EIGHTH CASE—Young said Saturday he was advised of an eighth case of a Milam resident testing positive for COVID-1
Names and locations are not being released but Young said Wednesday the eight cases are “scattered throughout the county.”
As with the others who have tested positive for the virus, Young said the Milam County Health Department is contacting all those who might have come into contact with the individual to advise them of the situation.
According to the Milam County Health Department, “exposure” to the virus is defined as a person having spent at least 10 minutes in contact with a person confirmed to have the virus and who has not recovered.
Young said three of the eight Milam cases have already recovered, with only one requiring hospitalization.
The confirmation process is running well behind testing, so reports of multiple cases—as happened the previous week—aren’t necessarily indicative of a surge in infections, only in getting results from previous tests.
“I had a friend get tested last Tuesday and we still don’t have the results back,” Young said Monday.
CAUTIONS—Yo u n g fielded questions in an hourlong radio broadcast last week and heard a caller report they had seen restaurants allowing persons to come inside and pick up to-go food, a violation of the most recent order.
“I’ve seen it, too,” Young said. “Do not do this!...If I have to close a restaurant down I will do it, and I have the authority to do it.”
The judge, in answer to a question, endorsed the wearing of gloves when residents are buying groceries.
The current order requests, but does not mandate, wearing masks.
Young said the question he is asked the most is why the county does not release the location (town or community) in which those who have tested positive reside.
“Really what good would that do?” he said.
“Even if that was someone on your block, the virus only lives 72 hours at the most. It takes longer than that to get the test results back. By the time you’ve found out (of that presumed positive test) that virus is dead.”
Young was emphatic the county would not release any name of persons with positive tests, citing federal privacy laws.
“I don’t know who they are. I don’t ask,” he said.
LONG HAUL—Young re-emphasized that Milam, and Texas, residents will be in the Shelter-in-Place situation for some time.
He said Monday the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicted the peak of the disease in Texas would not occur until April 24, with about 2,000 deaths, almost 10 times the number of Texas COVID-19 deaths recorded at the week’s beginning.
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