No COVID-19 outbreak at jail

Contrary to whatever rumors might be flying around, Sheriff Bobby Rader assures us there has been no outbreak of COVID-19 at the county jail.

A reader asked us, so we asked, and the sheriff replied, “There have been no inmates that have COVID-19. We do have a correctional officer that is being quarantined because of a positive test. The exposure did not come from the LCSO facility.”

The actual question to the newspaper asked, why had The Vindicator not reported the outbreak at the jail? And, the answer is because there hasn’t been one. We like to wait until things happen before reporting them.

Yesterday, the Liberty County Office of Emergency Management forwarded the latest number of confirmed cases in the county, which totaled 1,761. Of those, only 78 are still active, while 1,632 have recovered, and there have been 51 deaths.

Bars in the county are allowed to open at 50 percent capacity next Wednesday, Oct. 14.

Masks and social distancing remain the rules for entering businesses.

According to the Texas Department of State Health Services COVID-19 dashboard, Texas has had 785,830 confirmed cases, with 16,432 fatalities.

The Office of Emergency Management’s reports rely on an extra layer of confirmation than found on the DSHS site, but the DSHS site says some 2,272 COVID-19 cases have been reported in Liberty County, which means this county has the 42nd highest number of cases out of all counties in Texas. The DSHS site has fatalities here at 52, making Liberty County’s number of fatalities the 48th highest in the state out of its 254 counties.