Source – https://www.kvue.com/
Fayette County had a few dozen new cases of COVID-19 the past two weeks, but state restrictions pause elective surgeries and reduce restaurant capacity at 50%.
LA GRANGE, Texas — Travis County and Fayette County fall under the same hospital Trauma Service Area, meaning both follow the same restrictions during the pandemic, despite the difference in population and the number of coronavirus cases.
During this past week, more than 15% of all hospital patients in Trauma Service Area O – which includes many Central Texas counties – were COVID-19 patients for more than seven consecutive days. That triggered Gov. Greg Abbott’s orders to reduce restaurant and store capacity to 50% and to pause elective surgeries.
Fayette County Judge Joe Weber announced on Tuesday he’s attesting to Texas Department of State Health Services to exempt his county from the reduction.
“I intend to immediately file the necessary paperwork that will allow St. Marks to continue to provide the needed services to our residents and allow our businesses and restaurants to continue operating at 75%,” Weber said in a statement.
According to DSHS, Fayette County has not yet received the exemption. However, county officials say it should.
“Just in general, we don’t have people with more than 75% capacity,” Craig Moreau, chief of Emergency Management and Homeland Security in the county, said. “We try to limit the amount of people that are in our restaurants on a regular basis … It doesn’t look like the bar environment you see in major metropolitan areas.”
For elective surgeries, Moreau said they are necessary to keep the hospital open. St. Mark’s Medical Center is the only hospital servicing Fayette and Lee counties.
“That’s what the hospital is built around,” Moreau said. “We also have patients that don’t really have any access to get their problems fixed. You know, I take a little umbrage with the the term elective surgery because it’s not elective, like, ‘Hey, I’m going to go get a tummy tuck,’ or, you know, something of that nature. It’s not a truly elective surgery. The election comes, ‘Well, can I wait a week?’ Well, wait a week maybe. But that doesn’t mean I can wait a year.”
“As a rural facility, you know, surgery is a large part of our care that we provide,” Tammy Hartfield, the Chief Clinic Officer at St. Mark’s, said.
Hartfield added the pandemic, proportionally, is hitting her hospital just as hard as any hospital in urban areas like Travis County.
“It can range anywhere from two to 10 COVID-positive patients at any given one time hospitalized,” Hartfield said. “That could be 50% of the types of patients we have in our hospital.”
St. Mark’s does not have an Intensive Care Unit, so any patients that need specified or additional assistance are transferred to another hospital with the care and resources necessary.
“This surge is more intense than it was [in the summer]; we are performing more COVID testing than ever at the current time and more and more positives than ever before,” Hartfield said. “There is a lot more quarantine of patients and staff taking place due to illness.”
With the vaccine rollout, Fayette County only received 500 doses the week before Christmas. DSHS has not announced if any providers in the county will receive additional doses in the coming weeks.