5th COVID Classified Death Occurs Here

Numerous major Fayette County developments related to coronavirus have occurred this week:

• Officially, Fayette County has had its fifth death attributed to COVID-19, an elderly man in Pct. 4 (southern Fayette County). But according to Craig Moreau, Chief of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, that death might eventually be reclassified as not related to COVID.

“He had a lot of underlying medical issues,” Moreau said. “Any death is a tragedy and getting COVID certainly did not help his situation,” but Moreau said COVID was likely not the man’s main cause of death.

A Look at the Numbers

The total number of COVID cases in Fayette County has risen to 309, with 146 recoveries and 146 of those considered active cases. Of those active cases, Moreau said he believed only one was hospitalized as of Tuesday. There continues to be a number of young people testing positive, including some as young as preschool age, he said.

Just this week the county began breaking those active cases into two groups – Confirmed (of which we have 102) and Probable (of which we have 44).

Confirmed cases have been confirmed by a positive test. Probable cases, Moreau said, “have been resulting in a significant amount of our cases lately and some may find it valuable to see these cases separated from the lab confirmed cases. A probable case is someone who did not receive a lab confirmed result, but had significant contact with an infected individual and is experiencing similar or identical signs and symptoms. This is most commonly found in household contacts.”

Moreau said the new breakdown was done just to give people as much detailed information as possible. But almost as soon as he announced the tweak, Moreau said he started getting phone calls.

“People on both sides of the political spectrum were calling me and were furious,” Moreau said. Both sides were accusing him of trying to manipulate data for some political reason or another.

“Numbers don’t have political affiliations,” Moreau said. “Let numbers be numbers.”

Mass Testing

Last Sunday’s free testing event in Flatonia, done in cooperation with the State of Texas and the Army and Air Force National Guard, was the biggest yet locally with 307 individuals tested. The previous daily record here had been 206 tests. The testing done Sunday was a selfadministered cheek, gumline and tongue swab. These type of tests (compared to the deep nostril swab done previously) result in fewer false results, Moreau said, and are done by the patient themselves, resulting in less exposure by medical personnel. The drawback to the mouth swab is that they may not be as good at detecting COVID in the very earliest of stages. Moreau himself took a

Moreau himself took a test Sunday and got his results (negative for COVID) back in about 38 hours, so he said most residents who got tested should have received their results by midweek.

Back to School

Finally, Moreau said he is glad to hear about the plans to reopen schools for in-school instruction soon. “Kids need to be in school, they are safer in school. I am convinced of that. There may be adjustments, there may be shutdowns, but I am truly convinced kids are safer in school,” said Moreau said, citing data about the rise of child abuse incidents among other issues related to shutdowns.