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Coronavirus
Local health officials on Wednesday said they did not know how a Houston-area man who tested positive for the new coronavirus this week had become infected, suggesting the possibility of the first signs of community spread of the virus within Texas.
“It could very likely be the first community spread,” said Alicia Williams, director of the Montgomery County Public Health District.
The case raises questions about the number of unknown infections in Texas, given that government testing capacity for the COVID-19 disease remains limited. State officials estimated they had conducted "hundreds" of tests in recent weeks, but the largest public health lab in Texas is able to conduct a maximum of just 26 tests per day.
Local officials said they were taking the possibility of community spread seriously. If the virus is present in the general population, it is much harder to contain.
Dozens of Montgomery County residents are being tracked by public health workers, officials said, and Montgomery Independent School District will cancel classes beginning Thursday, ahead of spring break.
Asked how the Montgomery County man, who is in his 40s and in stable condition at a local hospital, might have contracted the virus, Melissa Miller said the case was still under investigation but that he had not traveled outside of Texas. “At this time I don’t have an answer to that question,” Miller, the chief operating officer of the Montgomery County Hospital District, told reporters. “Anything is possible.”
As of Tuesday, the tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Texas was 32. Eleven of those stem from people traveling abroad who were forced by the federal government to quarantine in San Antonio’s Lackland Air Force Base, where about 100 more people arrived to be quarantined Tuesday night. There have been other cases, linked to international and domestic travel, in the Houston area, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and in the Longview area in East Texas.
The Montgomery County case was first reported Tuesday.
Earlier Tuesday, Texas Department of State Health Services Commissioner John Hellerstedt told state lawmakers there was not yet evidence that Texas had “confirmed, sustained community-wide spread.”
“How do we know we don’t?” state Rep. Eddie Lucio III, a Brownsville Democrat, asked at a hearing of the House Public Health Committee. “It seems like we’ve isolated testing to very specific circumstances.”
Hellerstedt said doctors and hospitals did not yet have access to testing on their own premises. For now, he said, public health labs are trying to stretch their available capacity by testing samples from people who appear most likely to have been exposed.
There are 10 public health labs in Texas that are operational or soon coming online to test nose and throat swabs for the presence of genetic material from the new strain of the coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2. (COVID-19 is the disease caused by the virus.) The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that anyone can receive a test for the virus as long as a doctor agrees.
“As we progress, if we expect to see community-based spread of COVID-19, it will be useful to have wider availability of the testing,” Hellerstedt said. “I don’t know where they are with the development of point-of-care testing, but I think it’s still some months off.”
Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters on March 5 that in the coming weeks, the state lab network would be able to handle more than 125 tests per day. Texas’ testing capacity is limited due to a shortage of testing materials and lab personnel, said Chris Van Deusen, spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services.
In an effort to keep up with the growing number of infected Americans, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given some private labs permission to develop their own tests.
Texas doctors can order tests from at least two private labs, Van Deusen said, adding that he could not speak to the cost of that testing to consumers, but DSHS is “not charging for tests we run in our lab.”
One of the two private labs that are testing is LabCorp, whose COVID-19 test is now available to be ordered by doctors and healthcare providers anywhere in the U.S. A LabCorp spokesperson said pricing for the test has not been finalized and declined to speculate on what the price will be.
As more labs – both public and private – gain the ability to test for the virus that causes COVID-19, federal health officials have broadened the criteria for who may be tested.
Still, local officials have said current testing capacity is insufficient. Mayor Ron Nirenberg said this week that his city "needs a heck of a lot more testing, and we're requesting that ASAP."
The CDC urged doctors to “use their judgment” when deciding if a patient merits testing, and said they should consider symptoms as well as travel history and the possibility of close contact with people who tested positive.
Symptoms can include fever, cough and difficulty breathing, similar to seasonal flu. Doctors should rule out other causes of respiratory illness — such as seasonal flu, which present similarly to COVID-19 — before ordering a coronavirus test, according to the CDC guidance.
"First possible community spread case of coronavirus may have hit Texas in Montgomery County" was first published at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/03/11/coronavirus-texas-community-spread-may-be-montgomery-county/ by The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state.