May 13, 2020 406 PM
TRI-COUNTY — Around 320 tests have been conducted in the tri-county region, Dr. Ekta Escovar of the COVID-19 task force said, up from around 230 last week. The hospital is still waiting on results for one of its tests, she said, as well as results from additional mobile-testing conducted over the weekend in Fort Davis and Presidio.
So far, all of the results have been negative except for one patient: a South Brewster County resident who was tested at a state mobile-testing site last month. Escovar reiterated that that patient had recovered but said that the other case near the tri-county region —involving a patient in Ojinaga — was still considered an active case.
Those testing figures mean the tri-county has tested 17.21 people per 1,000 — slightly below the Texas average of 17.73 and far below the national average of 28.57. Texas has the fifth-worst testing rates in the country, she said.
“We want to get closer to where the U.S. is for testing,” she said, “and not where Texas is.” But in good news, the tri-county is also far behind the nation when it comes to coronavirus cases. Just 0.05 per 1,000 tri-county residents are confirmed to have disease, compared to 1.38 in Texas and 4.14 nationally.
Contradicting state officials, who have touted Texas’ reopening by claiming the state’s case count is trending in the right direction, Escovar said the state was “not seeing a downhill trend of active cases.”
There will be another testing drive in Marfa today, Thursday — but “with zero active cases, we’re not high on the priority list for testing,” Escovar said. She hopes to build up local testing capacity over the summer before a second potential disease wave in the fall.
