McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — More than 23,000 cases of coronavirus went unreported in January in Hidalgo County, health officials said Tuesday.
The numbers had not previously been reported due to a delay in testing and test results, according to a statement from Hidalgo County Health and Human Services officials that the county released on Twitter.
“Given the extraordinary demand for COVID-19 testing immediately after the holidays, we suspected that there was a high probability of a reporting backlog. That suspicion has now been confirmed,” Eduardo “Eddie” Olivarez, chief administrative officer for Hidalgo County Health and Human Services said in a statement.
“Testing vendors are responsible for submitting their own data to the state. We expect these data adjustments to continue over the next several weeks and encourage all COVID-19 test sites to be proactive in reporting results so we can provide a clear picture of COVID in our area,” OIivarez said.
Olivarez held a brief Zoom call with reporters on Tuesday afternoon and said the 23,200 new positive cases were part of an initial batch of 33,000 evaluated by the county, which found 9,000 duplications or errors. He said the process for evaluating cases is lengthy and often delayed.
And there are over 120 local vendors that provide COVID-19 testing directly to the state.
“Those numbers are then reported to us. So in the weeks to come, you’re going to start seeing large batches of positive tests from COVID,” Olivarez said.
Olivarez last month told Border Report that a subvariant of the omicron variant had been detected in the county and that health officials feared the omicron variant was widely spreading among the community.
“Omicron is the primary virus we’re seeing,” Olivarez said. “It is here in our community. It is very important that the public needs to understand that vaccinations are essential to help limit the number of people going into area hospitals.”
On Tuesday, Hidalgo County officials reported 614 new cases of coronavirus and eight deaths. That brings the total cases to 132,747 and 2,627 deaths since the pandemic began in March 2020, according to county officials.
Olivarez said there were 401 patients in area hospitals, including 92 adults and four pediatric patients in ICU.
Last week, Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez announced he had once again tested positive for coronavirus, as this border region faced hundreds of new cases each day.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at ssanchez@borderreport.com.