Hidalgo County announced Tuesday that five people have tested positive for the omicron variant of COVID-19. They are the first confirmed cases in the county, and joins Cameron County which confirmed its first case Monday afternoon and where cases exploded to over 1,200 on Tuesday.
According to a news release, four of the five individuals are adults and one is a child. Three of the four adults are fully vaccinated, and the other adult is partially vaccinated. The child is not vaccinated.
“Given the contagious nature of this variant, we have long suspected that Omicron was present in Hidalgo County,” Health and Human Services Chief Administrative Officer Eddie Olivarez said in a news release. “But these cases were the first official confirmation by the state.”
Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez said he remains in constant contact with local and state health experts to determine whether any new course of action is needed.
“I have no current plans to interrupt commerce with any type of closures,” Cortez said in the release. “The community already knows that the best course of action is what health experts have been saying for nearly two years now — avoid crowds, practice good hygiene, wear facial coverings and isolate yourselves if you test positive for COVID.”
The news comes the same day that the county reported three COVID-19 deaths and 474 new cases of the virus as hospitalizations are approaching 100.
Those who died include two women over 70 from Mission and Weslaco, and a man from Weslaco also over 70. Two of the three people were not vaccinated. Their deaths raised the county’s COVID-19 death toll to 3,531.
The 474 new cases include 215 confirmed, 257 probable and two suspected cases. They raised the county’s total number of positive cases to 124,199, including 71,785 confirmed, 49,232 probable and 3,182 suspected cases.
The county also reported no new cases among students and three new cases among staff in county schools. There have been a total of 4,486 cases among students and 863 among staff since the county began keeping track of COVID activity in schools, which was in August 2021.
There were 93 people in county hospitals with the virus Tuesday, including 76 adults and 17 children. There were also 25 people in intensive care units, including three children.
The county also reported 108 people were released from isolation Tuesday, raising that total to 118,719. There are 1,949 net active cases in the county.
As of Tuesday morning, Hidalgo County has administered a total of 746,781 COVID-19 tests, and 621,795 of those tests yielded negative results.
In Cameron County, the city of Brownsville elevated its COVID-19 matrix to Level 3 on Tuesday in response to a rapid increase of cases in the area.
On Tuesday, 1,207 new lab reports of COVID-19 were confirmed in Cameron County, 439 of which were confirmed via PCR testing while 768 were probable reports based on antigen testing.
The great majority of these new cases are in Brownsville, where 239 people tested positive using PCR tests and 532 are probable according to antigen tests.
