Krouse: Valley will not suffer as much from virus as other regions

EDINBURG, Texas - The dean of the UT-Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine says he is “guardedly optimistic” that  the coronavirus will not hurt the Rio Grande Valley as much as it has other parts of the nation.Dr. John H. Krouse was asked if the Valley would be spared the worst during a virtual town hall meeting last night. During the hour-long Q&A, Krouse was also asked when the pandemic would be at its most severe. McAllen Mayor Jim Darling phoned in towards the end of the webinar to say it was the best of its kind he had listened to. The event was hosted by U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez.The question on whether the Valley would be spared the worst of the coronavirus’ wrath came from a listener named Mark.“I was originally based in New York and I came to the Valley to hunker down away from the pandemic with my family down here,” Mark said. “I noticed that we enforced stay-at-home orders, I feel, earlier than we got our first case. My question is, is there any data to suggest that our outbreak here in the Valley will be lower or slower than LA or New York or bigger cities?”Krouse responded.“I would say yes and I think our local communities, counties and cities, did very early on adopt much more of a strict stance regarding staying at home, sheltering in place. I think we are beginning… you know, we will see maybe in another week, the growth that we have been seeing,” Krouse said.“But, at that point, we will have been at least 14 days or more in most of our shelter-in-place orders across the Valley. I would expect us to level off at that point.”Krouse continued: “I think our local leadership has done a tremendous job in acting promptly and acting in an aggressive way. So, I am very optimistic and the models that we are seeing suggests that we may do well given the severity of the problems we are seeing in other places. I am very guardedly optimistic.”Go to www.riograndeguardian.com to read the latest border news stories and watch the latest news videos.