FORT STOCKTON — When it comes to coronavirus case-counts in Pecos County, state health officials have some explaining to do.
Earlier this month, The Big Bend Sentinel reported that coronavirus outbreaks at two Pecos County prisons — the state’s N5 and Lynaugh units — were driving accelerating case-counts in the region. And perhaps unsurprisingly, those numbers continued to climb in the ensuing days, last Monday hitting 105 cases.
Then, last Tuesday, something highly unusual happened: The number dropped precipitously, from 105 to 15.
The next day, the numbers continued their wild up-and-down trajectory, settling at 107 cases. The number didn’t change for days. By press time it had risen slightly, to 112.
Since the Texas Department of State Health Services tracks total cases and not just active ones, it’s almost impossible to imagine how the number could fall. After all, outbreaks are an addition problem — not a subtraction one.
The Texas Department of State Health Services, which has responded to almost none of The Big Bend Sentinel’s questions since the coronavirus outbreak began, did not return calls or emails requesting more information on these Pecos County numbers. The state’s regional health authority, Region 9/10, declined to comment, instead referring questions to the main Austin office of the Texas DSHS.
Local officials are baffled. “Where did they get this number?” Pecos County Judge Joe Shuster asked in an interview. “We never dropped down to 15.”
For a time, one explanation seemed likely: perhaps the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which runs state prisons, decided to remove its number from county case-counts? After all, Jeremy Desel, director of communications for the agency, had previously expressed concern that some TDCJ numbers were being double-counted — for instance, if a prison employee was tested both at a prison and off-site. He felt the prison system was being unfairly criticized for issues with Texas coronavirus tracking, which is the responsibility of DSHS, not TDCJ.
TDCJ’s frustration is understandable. While Texas DSHS continues to have the seventh-worst per capita testing rate in the nation, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, TDCJ has instead spent weeks “deploying significant testing,” including on asymptomatic patients, according to a May news release from the agency.
At press time, the TDCJ has tested over 107,000 people, including both prisoners and guards. Compare that to its total estimated prison population of around 131,000 inmates, according to data compiled by The Texas Tribune.
“We’ve been testing almost 100 percent of everyone in every unit,” a TDCJ spokesperson said.
But that explanation now seems unlikely for a few reasons. For one, TDCJ denies it’s made any changes to how it reports prison coronavirus numbers to the state.
“Not on your life,” a TDCJ spokesperson said when asked about the purported changes. “We report to everyone that we’re supposed to. We haven’t changed any protocol.”
In a follow-up email to The Big Bend Sentinel, Robert Hurst, a communications officer with the agency, stressed the same point.
“Nothing has changed,” he said. “TDCJ provides information regarding offender/staff testing to DSHS.”
More importantly, though, the math doesn’t quite work out. Assuming that TDCJ or DSHS did actually remove its local prison data from Pecos County’s count, it would mean that Pecos County had reached its own count of 15 cases on Tuesday. But at that time, the county in fact had a count of 31 cases, according to Judge Shuster.
A few structural issues are adding to the confusion. For one thing, Texas prisons report their numbers to health officials in Austin rather than to local counties.
That process might make sense on a state level — after all, TDCJ is a statewide agency — but it keeps county officials less informed about outbreaks brewing in prisons in their own communities.
“That’s part of the problem,” Judge Shuster said. “They [TDCJ] report their figures straight to the Austin DSHS office. We report to El Paso — and then our numbers go from El Paso to Austin.”
Making matters worse, Pecos County — unlike Presidio and Brewster counties — doesn’t have its own local health authority. Instead, they rely on officials in DSHS Region 9/10, according to Shuster.
With Shuster just as confused about the numbers, he can only think of one explanation: maybe it was an error.
“It’s got to be that somebody entered the numbers in the wrong slot or something,” he said. “When I saw those numbers, I thought, ‘This is crazy.’ Because they’re not even close.”
