With Cameron County residents now having access to at-home COVID-19 test kits, the county’s health officials want those testing at home to provide the results to the county’s public health department.
Residents can report their results to the Cameron County Public Health website at www.cameroncountytx.gov/publichealth/. Residents should report both negative and positive results.
“As more households will be able to test for COVID with at-home tests, it will make it difficult to keep up with what is truly happening in terms of COVID-19 cases in our community,” stated Esmeralda Guajardo, health administrator for Cameron County. “In order for us to better understand it and continue to keep the public informed, we are asking residents to help us by self-reporting their results. We intend to report these numbers within our daily case report and differentiate between at-home tests and tests reported to us by medical providers.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the public could register for free at-home testing kits on line beginning Jan. 19. There is a limit of one order per household with each order containing four individual rapid antigen COVID-19 tests.
Cameron County on Friday reported 1,084 total new cases. Out of that figure, 946 were confirmed cases and 138 probable cases. There were two more deaths.
Since Cameron County began reporting COVID-19 cases 186,495 individuals had been tested with 63,174 positive cases and 118,521 negative cases. There have been 2,051 deaths. There have been 54,190 recovered cases and 13,691 antigen recovered cases.
Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino Jr. is urging everyone conducting at-home testing to report the results to the county. He is also urging county residents to continue to wear facial masks while they are out.
“We still have a little more time to deal with omicron but we need everyone to continue to do their part by masking, obviously avoiding crowds and utilizing social distancing,” Trevino said.
