Though Hidalgo County health officials have been reporting hundreds of COVID-19 cases on a daily basis, the number of new positive cases is actually a lot higher with more than 18,000 positive tests having been reported to the county over the last two weeks.
Hidalgo County currently has a backlog of COVID-19 cases needing to be reported to the state, according to Eddie Olivarez, the chief administrator for the county’s health and human services department.
Because of the backlog in data, the county has actually had more than 18,000 positive cases from Dec. 23 to Jan. 10 as opposed to the approximately 3,000 cases the county has reported during that time.
“We are backlogged with the data to be entered into the system,” Olivarez said during a news conference Monday. “The state of Texas has had complications with their NED system, or the National Epidemiological Database system, which can take up to 30 minutes to enter one individual case.”
And the problem wasn’t exlusive to the county, Olivarez said, adding that local pharmacies and doctor’s offices have had complications entering their data as well.
“It’s just been tremendously overwhelmed,” he said.
The county was working closely with the state and with vendors to coordinate their efforts to ensure the data is entered properly.
“However, due to the numbers that we’re looking at, it has been very difficult to get that data entered,” Olivarez said. “So our daily count does not necessarily reflect the actual positive tests.”
On Monday, Hidalgo County reported 442 new cases of COVID-19.
Of the county’s new cases, 290 were reported as confirmed, 147 as probable and five as suspect, bringing the county to a total of 125,730 cases, of which 72,641 are confirmed, 49,902 probable and 3,187 suspected.
Local schools continued to report pandemic data Monday, adding 33 staff cases and 133 student cases to their totals. Those totals stand at 1,532 and 5,318 respectively.
The county also reported one COVID-related death, that of a Pharr man in his 60s who was not vaccinated. His death brings the total for the county to 3,536.
Area hospitals are treating 163 adults and 15 pediatric patients with the virus; 43 of the adults and two of the pediatric patients are in intensive care units.
County health officials also reported that they are working with local school districts to coordinate vaccine clinics for students.
Cameron County health officials reported 2,011 new cases — 1,358 confirmed and 653 probable cases.
The county also reported two COVID-related deaths on Monday — a La Feria man in his 60s and a Los Fresnos man in his 50s. Both individuals were fully vaccinated and their deaths raise Cameron County’s COVID-19 death toll to 2,039.
Meanwhile, UT Health RGV is offering COVID-19 testing in Edinburg, Harlingen and Brownsville as health providers continue to be in short supply of tests.
“We have put in a request to procure more of rapid testing, especially rapid testing, and of course it’s in short supply,” Olivarez said. “The demand is extremely high nationwide and these companies are large-scale national companies that are being requested to buy testing from all over the United States, so we are in their competition to try to get as much testing as possible.”
“But so are the local pharmacists, so are the local vendors as well,” Olivarez added, “so there is a shortage of availability as well as being able to get access to it.”
Of the testing that’s been conducted locally, five were confirmed positive for the highly infectious omicron variant. Though just a few out of thousands, Olivarez said the consensus is that omicron is the predominant variant of all current cases.
“I want to make real clear, only the state of Texas Department of State Health Services laboratory and/or the CDC laboratories at Fort Collins or Atlanta, are the ones that can test for the variant for us here in the Rio Grande Valley,” Olivarez said. “They are the ones that give us that final outcome on it being a delta, a Brazilian, or an omicron.
“So it is very important that we understand that we have a very small percentage of our overall population being tested for a variant so that’s why we have the small confirmed numbers of omicron,” he added, “but we all feel, the medical community feels, that omicron is the primary form of COVID.”
The county is currently coordinating with the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM), the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), and local partners to coordinate a large regional testing clinic, according to Olivarez.
“However, those plans are still being formalized and developed,” he said.
He encouraged anyone with any questions regarding that vaccination site to get in contact with TDEM.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect corrected information from Hidalgo County regarding its testing site and phone number.
