CORYELL COUNTY, Texas — Coryell County Judge Roger Miller got an email from the Department of State Health Services Region 7 office at 4 p.m. Thursday. Miller said Region 7 wanted to let the county know they had fixed the state office's database problems.
That was the good news. The bad news was the county had 2477 additional COVID-19 cases which they had not been informed about.
This increased the current case total from 2947 to around 5424 in a single day.
"It's almost twice (as many cases). It's an 85 percent increase," Miller said. "And it was all going to happen at one time. There are several things that concern me about that when the number is that large. We make decisions off the information we receive from Region 7 to assess what the infection rate is in the county. Do we allow certain events to happen? Do we prohibit certain events from happening?"
Adding to the anxiety, the county didn't actually get the details of the new cases, which turned out to number 2488, on Monday. Once Judge Miller received the list he found many of the cases were more than a month old. Some positive cases were dated as far back as July or May of 2020. Still, others grouped multiple individuals to the same address which turned out to be the Alfred D. Hughes Unit, a prison, in Gatesville.
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The good news on Monday was the data did not suggest a sudden outbreak. The bad news, the county can't take any action for cases that occurred months ago.
"When you have half of the data, you are not making a very informed decision," Miller said. "I'm a firm believer that, at the time, you don't make good decisions or bad decisions, time will determine whether a decision is good or bad. You make uninformed or informed decisions. Without those critical pieces of data, we were making uninformed decisions."
Miller also took issue with the county having to weed through cases that were actually located in the state prison system, where the county had no authority to make decisions related to those cases.
6 News had already reached out to the Texas Department of State Health Services about the sudden increase in cases for Coryell County on Monday.
DSHS Director of Media Relations Chris Van Deusen told 6 News the Region 7 Office had been behind in reporting data since November when cases started to skyrocket. DSHS offices handle case data for counties that do not have public health districts or health departments. Region 7 is responsible for 23 such counties.
"After Thanksgiving, It went from six, seven, eight hundred cases a week to over a thousand and then to thousands each week. It was simply more than we had the personnel to keep up with," Van Deusen said. "The majority of cases in November and December were reported timely, but there was a large number that weren't."
Van Deusen said multiple counties in central Texas would see large increases in cases this week as the office gets caught up. He said additional staff and better technology should help them stay caught up.
"The good news is, it seems to be ironed out now. We've got some new technology that's going to make it easier to keep up with those cases, make sure they are reported more quickly, and make sure we are sharing that information with local authorities," Van Deusen said. "This was handicapping our ability to report the exact number of cases, but were certainly sharing with them (before)."
Judge Miller told 6 News he hopes reporting will be faster so the county can give citizens a correct picture of the pandemic in the county.
"When we put a number up on our website, I want to be 100 percent confident I can explain every one of those cases," Miller said. "I'm not trying to over-inflate numbers. I'm not trying to hide any of those numbers either."
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