The employee was last in the store on May 13 and it has been deep cleaned and sanitized multiples times since, according to a press release issued by H-E-B.
This is the second case H-E-B has reported at New Braunfels locations, the first was on May 14 at the store at 651 S. Walnut Ave.
Confirmed cases in Comal and Guadalupe County Comal County issued a press release on Friday that reported another coronavirus case had been confirmed, bringing its total to 82. Of those cases, the county reported that 20 remain active and two patients are hospitalized.
In Guadalupe County, the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) reported five additional cases on the same day, bringing it's case count to 121.
Comal County's Office of Public Health has received reports of 2,343 tests conducted, with 533 results pending. The county's press release notes that the rate of positive tests has dropped to 4.53%.
That rate was 5.8% on Monday before mandatory testing of nursing home residents and staff members had begun by order of Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday.
Of the 2,343 tests performed, 944—40.3%—are a part of this order and were done regardless of if symptoms were present in the people being tested.
Inflating testing numbers to keep positive rates low
Earlier this week, Abbott told reporters in a press conference that antibody tests would not be reported with tests for active cases of the coronavirus.
"The answer is no, they are not co-mingling those numbers," Abbot said May 18. "Those numbers will be provided separately."
However, DSHS tacitly admitted this week that antibody testing had been included in its published testing numbers for counties across the state when it began reporting them separately on its website.
The practice of reporting them together, which appears to have begun May 4, artificially reduced the rate of positive tests returned.
Abbott has stated that the positivity rate for testing would be used to gauge the timing of reopening Texas.
On the local level, Comal County's OPH has reported antibody tests independently from other tests and has conducted 805 of them at its office. 10 have been returned positive, which indicated a previous infection of COVID-19.
A press release from Comal County also noted that its figures for antibody testing are not comprehensive for the county and they are not necessarily limited to the county's residents.
