Brazos County Health District including new data on COVID-19 cases

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – Starting Wednesday, the Brazos County Health District will begin reporting the “raw” number of positive COVID-19 cases.

Previously, the health district only reported cases it had investigated. An investigation determines things like age and demographics and this is also how they contact to trace each case.

The daily “raw” number will be the total number of positive cases that the health district has received but has not yet investigated and confirmed.

On Wednesday 130 cases were confirmed by the health district with 1770 (raw cases) tests still awaiting investigation.

About 300 cases are coming every day for investigation, said Dr Seth Sullivan, Brazos County health authority, as they work to keep the momentum going and want the community to be on alert.

“It’s unconventional for a public health agency because we like to confirm what we post, that we are accurate,” Sullivan said. “We are trying to be as specific as possible, unfortunately the numbers do not allow that level of accuracy at the moment, so we have decided on that basis, this is the best way to communicate what the situation is.”

According to the state’s dashboard, just over 367,000 COVID-19 tests have been performed in Brazos County.

In this latest wave, more testing is done, especially with Texas A&M requiring students and staff to test by next week. While we can expect to see more positive cases reported due to increased testing, Sullivan says it’s the Delta variant causing high positivity rates.

“The Delta variant is unfortunately much more transmissible than the previous variant and we have seen it in our community and we have seen that in our hospital, affecting our hospitals, we have talked at length about our hospitals being as busy as they are. , intensive care is as busy as they are, ”Sullivan said.

Brazos County reports a positivity rate of 8.34%. Texas A&M reported a positivity rate of just 2.7% on Tuesday.

Sullivan also addressed the discrepancies between state-reported deaths and health district-reported deaths.

The state scorecard reports 294 deaths in Brazos County, while the health district has just 275.

Sullivan says that since the start of the pandemic, they have worked to keep those numbers on track. However, if an agency reports a death directly to the state before reporting it to the county, it takes time for the health district to collect and reflect that data.

“We have to find out where that number is different and unfortunately it takes longer than we sometimes would like to get that information, so we continue to work on it and increase that number,” Sullivan said.

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