By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
City council members and city administrators sounded the alarm about the rapid rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in Del Rio and discussed the situation during Tuesday’s city council meeting.
City Manager John Sheedy, who had for months briefed the council members on COVID while serving as the city’s emergency management director, reprised that role Tuesday, when he told council members, “Our clinics are overwhelmed and understaffed.”
He urged Del Rioans not to seek COVID testing unless they have symptoms of the virus and he urged the unvaccinated to take advantage of vaccination clinics being held at Plaza Del Sol Mall from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays.
Sheedy said there are no COVID patients currently being treated at Val Verde Regional Medical Center and added 17 COVID patients have been transferred out of the county for medical treatment elsewhere.
“We do (currently) have 1,300 positive cases, so there’s a lot of positive cases. I think we’ve all seen this, and I think we’re just going to have to go back to where we were before, which is wear a mask,” Sheedy told the council.
He said the city has been working closely with the county and the school district to monitor the recent rise in cases and to strategize responses to the outbreak.
He said the city’s emergency operations center remains active.
“All the tools that we have, social distancing and masking, we can’t mandate anything anymore, so really it’s just up to our community. We just want to ask everybody to wear a mask and go back to doing what you were doing before,” Sheedy said.
“We are hoping that we have a couple of weeks, and we may already be seeing (cases) plateau a little bit in our community, but if we can just batten down the hatches and everybody try and take extreme precautions until we can get past this,” he added.
After Sheedy’s presentation, Councilwoman Alexandra Falcon Calderon asked about the vaccination clinics at the Plaza Del Sol Mall.
She noted the clinics are held from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays and recommended the city post frequent reminders about the clinics on its social media platforms in English and Spanish.
Councilman J.P. Sanchez asked if the clinics at the mall also provide the booster shots, and Sheedy said they do.
“Do you have to have an appointment for the booster?” Sanchez asked.
“No. You can just show up at the mall, from what I understand,” Sheedy replied.
Councilman Steven Webb asked, “The people that are infected right now, is the majority of it the new strain or is it a combination or what is it?”
“That’s something that’s very difficult for us to know without DNA testing. It’s really expensive to actually determine if you have the omicron (variant of COVID). We believe that that’s prevalent right now because of the way the disease, the virus, is presenting itself, it appears to be omicron. I’m pretty confident that’s the majority of what we have,” Sheedy replied.
Councilman Raul C. Ojeda asked if the school district, county and city were planning any meetings to deal with aspects of the outbreak, and Sheedy reiterated that he was in close contact with leaders from the other entities.
“I can promise you that there is close coordination between all the entities,” Sheedy said.
Councilman Alfredo “Fred” Carranza Jr., who served as the meeting’s presiding officer in the absence of Mayor Bruno “Ralphy” Lozano and Mayor Pro-tem Jim DeReus, asked if the city had enough testing supplies.
“I know there’s been a big shortage, and I’ve gotten a lot of calls from people. Have we made any more headway on getting more supplies for testing?” Carranza asked.
“So far, we’ve been okay, from what I understand. We’ve been able to meet the demand that we have here. I know there have been some shortages, at one of our sites in particular, at the transportation center. They’ve had some problems getting tests, but I think we just got 3,000 here locally ourselves, and as far as I understand, they have been able to get the testing supplies. Again, we’re concerned about it, but for right now, we’ve been able to meet the demand,” Sheedy replied.
“I know it’s been a concern, and I just want to let the citizens know we’re doing all we can to get the testing supplies. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks, as the city manager said, we will begin to plateau and start seeing the downside to this,” Carranza added.
Sheedy said the city has put together a variety of information about COVID on its web site and Facebook page for citizens to look at.
He said the most critical need now is for the citizens to have good, up-to-date information about COVID and said the city would work toward that end, including an expansion of hours at its emergency operations center hotline.
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