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Ross Pranter, 37, is the only local police officer to be diagnosed with the disease caused by the coronavirus. (APD)
Austin patrol Officer Ross Pranter woke up on the last Friday in March with no sense of taste or smell.
Three weeks in quarantine and recovery later, Pranter returned to his South Central Austin patrol shift feeling happy, healthy, cautious—and lucky, because his bout with COVID-19 had been uneventful.
Even so, he said Friday, "I wouldn't wish this on anybody."
<p>Pranter, 37, is the only local police officer to be diagnosed with the disease caused by the coronavirus. Officials have not determined where he got it, but do not rule out the possibility he caught it from a member of the community during a patrol shift.</p><p>The loss of his taste and smell didn't immediately trigger a red flag with Pranter because he sometimes experiences that with allergies, he said, and because it wasn't a widely known symptom at the time. </p><p>When his wife called with that update later that afternoon, Pranter alerted his supervisor and went home. </p><p>On Monday, his test came back positive—and Pranter and his entire South Central Austin patrol shift were quarantined for two weeks. No one else on his shift caught the virus.</p><p>A healthy-looking Pranter returned to work on Friday wearing a face mask and telling his muffled story of recovery outside police headquarters. His message: Stay cautious, flatten the curve, obey social distancing, and watch your own body for signs that something is not right. Best to catch it early and avoid contaminating others who may not be so well-equipped to fight it off.</p><p>Behind him, volunteers handed out barbecue lunches to police officers, a charity-event-turned-welcome-back-party. </p><p>"Today we celebrate," said Ken Casaday, president of the Austin Police Association. "We're very blessed and happy to have him back without him having to suffer [any major symptoms]." </p><p>Pranter said he did not experience a fever and did not have to be hospitalized, but said he had feelings of nausea and anxiety in addition to his sensory loss. It was a miserable feeling, even though his symptoms were mild, he said. </p><p>The loss of his senses was especially strange, he said—hard to swallow, a cotton-mouth feeling, and food tasted bad. </p><p>"You can't taste it, but you can tell something is not right," he said. </p><p>As to how he caught it, he said, he recalls a person he came into contact with on a call, who appeared to have symptoms, but nothing was confirmed. The 911 call was placed by a neighbor who was unable to answer screening questions on the phone about the subject's health, police said. </p><p>Police have been wearing personal protective gear and practicing social distancing since at least mid-March.</p>
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To help make sense of all the information emerging about COVID-19 in Austin, we're answering a few big questions:
Is the COVID situation improving?
<p>Not quite.</p> <p>Local health officials have identified hospital admissions as a key metric because it is not affected by reporting delays or testing shortages.</p> <p>"It's a good predictor of actual case burden in the community," Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott said Tuesday.</p> <p>The number of COVID-related hospitalizations in the Austin metro has held steady for the last 10 days. </p> <p>"The trend has been relatively flat," Escott said. </p><p><br>Since the start of the month, the average number of hospitalized COVID patients has declined 44%, from 146.8 on Sept. 1 to 82 on Sept. 29. </p> <p>But the average number of new cases reported each day has increased 42%—from 78 to 111.1—over that same time period. </p> <p>Escott has attributed these diverging trend lines to the increasing number of cases among young people, who are much less likely to require hospitalization than older patients. </p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ1MTI3Ni9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMTk4MDI4NH0.XxvY7wkBOfT-BtHF8JhtIGX0Dv8apitlsV-JZMb53pA/img.png?width=980" id="f2149" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e69fc96d61833754a62b5ea7a5e9cb3e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />What is a "twindemic"?
<p>It's time to add another word to your pandemic vocabulary.</p><p>Health experts have raised concerns of a "twindemic," when the COVID pandemic inevitably overlaps with the annual flu season, which begins in October.</p><p>Last year's flu season was particularly bad, Escott said last week, and local ICUs hit capacity from flu patients alone.</p><p>"Our hospitals cannot handle surges of both," he said. "We're going to have to ration care."</p><p>Escott has encouraged Austinites to <a href="https://austonia.com/flu-season-austin" target="_self"><u>get vaccinated</u></a> before the flu season intensifies this winter. </p><div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="187ed35bc13596eb1d0e6e1e0ba084ea"><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/austinpublichealth/posts/3992955670717819"></div></div>What is going on with schools?
<p>Austin ISD is preparing to reopen <a href="https://austonia.com/austin-school-reopening" target="_self"><u>for in-person learning</u></a> next week, following in the footsteps of other area districts, including Eanes ISD and Round Rock ISD.</p><p>Escott is supportive of AISD's reopening plan, which follows Austin Public Health guidelines to start capacity limits at 25%. He said there is no evidence that disease transmission is occurring in classrooms or <a href="https://twitter.com/AustinISD/status/1310716756374237186" target="_blank">while students are passing in hallways</a>.</p><p>"For those who are concerned about putting teachers at risk, I'm married to an educator, and she went into school today," Escott told the AISD board of trustees on Monday. </p><p>He added that the risk of transmission appears to be limited to extracurricular and social activities, where students may not be wearing masks or adhering to social distancing guidelines. </p><p>In total, local primary and secondary schools that have already reopened have reported 24 COVID cases among students and 21 among staff since mid-August, according to APH data shared Tuesday. An additional 116 people have been identified as "close contacts" of impacted students and staff. </p><p>The University of Texas at Austin <a href="https://austonia.com/ut-austin-spring-semester" target="_self"><u>announced this week</u></a> that it is planning on a spring semester structured "in much the same way" as the current term. </p><p>In a community-wide email sent on Monday, President Jay Hartzell commended students for making adjustments, which he wrote have helped keep the university's COVID numbers "as low as possible."</p><p>Since the current semester began on Aug. 26, the university has reported more than 700 cases among students and fallen short of its stated goal to test 5,000 asymptomatic community members a week. </p><p>Hartzell said the university is working out "some kinks" in its proactive testing program, including not requiring a second confirmatory test for students' whose rapid tests return positive results, allowing for walk-up testing without an appointment and debuting a new incentive program, details of which are forthcoming.</p>What metrics would help determine a drop to a Stage 2 level of risk?
<p>The number of new COVID hospitalizations each day would need to fall below 10, on average, and the local positivity rate would need to drop to 3% or lower for local health officials to recommend a move to Stage 2 of <a href="https://austonia.com/austin-covid-stage-3" target="_blank">their risk-based guidelines</a>, Escott said.</p><p>At this lower level, recommended restrictions would loosen. Social gatherings would be allowed to increase from 10 people to 25, and residents would be allowed to resume non-essential trips and return to work at reopened businesses.</p><p>Travis County is currently reporting 12 new COVID-related hospital admissions each day, on average.</p><p>The overall positivity rate was 4.4% last week, but disparities remain across demographic groups, with Latino residents returning a positivity rate of 8%. </p>What about testing?
<p>Demand for testing has declined post-surge. </p> <p>Escott said last week that testing sites administered by APH are testing about 2,000 people a week despite having the capacity to test more than a thousand people a day.</p> <p>It is important to note, however, that the testing numbers reported by APH do not include the positive results from <a href="https://austonia.com/rapid-covid-test" target="_self"><u>rapid antigen tests</u></a> because of CDC guidance that they be considered "probable" and not "confirmed." </p> <p>Like the genetic, or polymerase chain reaction tests, administered at APH testing sites, rapid antigen tests detect positive infections. They also provide results in about 15 minutes, which is central to their appeal.</p> <p>While they are marginally less accurate, rapid antigen tests are in fairly wide use. Some private testing sites in the Austin area report that <a href="https://austonia.com/coronavirus-test" target="_self"><u>the majority of the tests</u></a> they conduct are rapid due to patient demand. </p> <p>Between Aug. 6 and Sept. 24, a total of 2,174 positive rapid antigen test results were reported in Travis County, according to APH. The department would not release information pertaining to the number of positive antigen tests performed overall. </p> <p>During that same time period, 6,648 COVID cases were confirmed by positive genetic test results in Travis County. </p> <p>If the cases detected by rapid antigen testing were considered "confirmed" rather than "probable," the local caseload between Aug. 6 and Sept. 24 would have increased by about a third. </p>What is post-COVID syndrome?
<p>Nine months into the COVID pandemic, doctors across the world are reporting that the virus has become a chronic condition—post-COVID syndrome—for some patients, known as long-haulers.</p> <p>"As people recover from the initial infection, studies are starting to show that in some patients, it might actually take weeks or even months to return to baseline health," Dr. Esther Melamed, an assistant professor of neurology at Dell Medical School, said in a press release issued Tuesday. </p> <p>Long-hauler symptoms may include difficulty breathing, headaches, memory problems, overwhelming fatigue and persistent loss of taste and smell, as well as worsening of pre-COVID conditions, such as diabetes and mood disorders. </p><video controls id="8e12e" width="100%" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ccc522351e8e55862283aed7dc73050d" expand="1" feedbacks="true" mime_type="video/mp4" shortcode_id="1601497346135" url="https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/runner%2F19818-Melamed-Post-COVID-Syndrome---Media.mp4" videoControls="true"> <source src="https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/runner%2F19818-Melamed-Post-COVID-Syndrome---Media.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video><p><em>Dr. Esther Melamed, an assistant professor at Dell Medical School, speaks about post-COVID syndrome. </em></p>
What is the status of federal coronavirus relief funding?
<p>Local and state governments must spend all of the federal coronavirus relief dollars they received through the CARES Act by the end of the calendar year, despite the ongoing nature of the pandemic and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/pelosi-mnuchin-set-to-talk-as-.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><u>the absence of additional relief packages</u></a> passed by Congress. </p> <p>"We must continue to provide testing and contact tracing," APH Director Stephanie Hayden told Austin City Council on Tuesday. "Those efforts have really helped us as a city and a county… We have to just flag it for you all that federal funding is slated to end this December."</p> <p>Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Friday that the state will allocate $171 million of CARES Act funding to help renters <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/25/texas-rent-help-evictions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><u>avoid eviction</u></a>.</p> <p>The Travis County Commissioners Court discussed last week how best to meet the December deadline. As of mid-September, the county has spent less than one-fifth of the federal relief dollars it received through the CARES Act, although the remainder has been allocated.</p><h5>Want to read more stories like this one? Start every day with a quick look at what's happening in Austin. Sign up for Austonia.com's free daily morning email.</h5>
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