EDINBURG — Hidalgo County announced that its Health and Human Services Department was notified of 23,000 new COVID-19 cases for the month of January that weren’t previously reported due to a backlog by other reporting providers.
In a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Eddie Olivarez, chief administrative officer of the Hidalgo County Health and Human Services Department, said residents should be prepared for other large batches of case data in the coming weeks.
The county, he said, saw an influx of testing over the holidays as people tested before traveling and after returning.
“In the weeks to come, days and weeks to come, don’t be surprised if you start seeing large numbers, because all that data’s finally catching up,” he said.
Processing that data, Olivarez said, can be time intensive. It can take anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes to upload a single case to the state system.
Case analysis can also significantly change the raw reporting the county receives.
According to Olivarez, the 23,000 backlog cases the county announced Tuesday came after analyzing a batch of 33,000 cases, about 9,000 of which were determined to be duplicates or errors.
“So this is a very, very detailed review of all these tests,” he said.
However, that review does not include the tests that are being done by local vendors.
“We have upwards of 120 local vendors who actually provide COVID testing locally here within Hidalgo County, and they are submitting their data directly to the state.”
There are also no CDC or state requirements mandating reporting at-home tests to the county health department, Olivarez said.
“So in the weeks to come, you’re going to start seeing large batches of positive tests from COVID, but those have been the batches or the tests that have been done over the last several weeks — not only by us, but by local vendors,” he said.
There is a silver lining: hospitalizations remain lower than they were during the delta surge last year. Olivarez attributes that to high local vaccination rates, natural antibodies, people being aware of precautions and omicron simply being slightly less dangerous.
Still, the county has seen fully vaccinated individuals succumb to the disease, Olivarez said, although most of them also had severe comorbidity issues.
“The COVID vaccine does not prevent you from getting COVID, I want to make that very clear,” he said. “It just lessens the symptomology and it lessens the amount of illness.”
The pandemic is still a serious concern, Olivarez said. People are dying daily and hospitalization rates are high.
On Tuesday, the county reported 614 new cases and eight COVID-19 deaths.
The deaths include a woman from Donna over the age of 70, two Edinburg women over the age of 70, two McAllen women in their 30s, a McAllen man over the age of 70, a Pharr man in his 40s and a San Juan man over the age of 70.
According to the county, seven out of the eight people who died were unvaccinated. The eight deaths raised the county’s COVID-19 death toll to 3,627.
The county also reported 138 new cases among students and 25 new cases among staff in county schools. There have been a total of 10,993 cases among students and 3,037 cases among staff since the county began keeping track of COVID activity in schools in August 2021.
As of Tuesday morning, there were 399 people in county hospitals with the virus, including 373 adults and 26 children. There were 92 people in intensive care units with the virus, including 90 adults and two children.
Cameron County reported COVID-19 data as well Tuesday, adding 801 new cases of the virus and four additional deaths.
None of those four individuals were vaccinated and they were all above the age of 70.
Of the county’s new positive cases, 284 were reported as confirmed, 511 were reported as probable and six were the result of self-reporting from at-home tests.
