Covid cases, hospitalizations, rising in El Paso; testing lines get longer

While all this sounds familiar, El Paso County judge Ricardo Samaniego says conditions will not improve any time soon.

Quite the contrary, the county judge says health and government officials are bracing and trying to prepare for another spike.

Although there are lessons learned from the first spike, this one will not come without its own challenges.

"Their expectation is that there's gonna be a huge spike going into, right before, between the 20th and the end of the month and into February," said County Judge Ricardo Samaniego.

Judge Samaniego says the reason for an inevitable spike is a combination of factors: the Omicron variant, not wearing masks, holiday gatherings and a return to the classrooms.

Add to that, staffing issues, like the ones being faced at test sites where wait times can vary from three to five hours.

"The reason we're not as efficient in testing is not because of the kits, but because of not having personnel. A lot of them have Covid, a lot of them don't wanna come in and work in those environments. If we have a spike, It's not gonna be about space anymore; It's gonna be about personnel being able to fulfill the jobs," the judge said.

Hospitalization rates are climbing.

Samaniego says we're not at a critical point,  yet.

"We've gotten close to being in a critical situation. We're already working with chief Rodriguez and chief D'Agostino and Dr. Ocaranza, to begin to ask for personnel, like we did last time from all over the country." Samaniego said.

That's when El Paso made national headlines with sometimes as many as 28 hundred cases daily.

As many as 1,800 traveling nurses arrived to help.

He says that may not happen this time around because the same nurses who came to the Borderland then, may not want to return.

Samaniego says the only way positivity rates will go down is if more people get vaccinated. Even then, Covid is teaching us a very important lesson about vaccines.

"That we're not immune from the virus. It's a protection to keep you out of the hospital more than anything. If you look at the main objective of the vaccine, it's less severe, keeps you out of the hospital. But you can still pass it to somebody who's not vaccinated and there you go, we start this situation that we were headed last time," he said.

One topic the county judge feels uncomfortable talking about is the number of deaths.

Although the county is better prepared with more modules for victims who died from the virus, just having to talk about the topic should make people aware that we are not over Covid 19.