Alejandra Yañez | THE RIDER
Almost 16% of COVID-19-related deaths in Texas come from Cameron and Hidalgo counties despite making up only about 4.4% of the state population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.
Among the top five counties in Texas for COVID-19 deaths, Hidalgo ranks at No. 2 with 1,676 deaths and Cameron at No. 5 with 1,079 as of Monday.
Asked why this is, Esmeralda Guajardo, the health administrator for Cameron County, replied, “If you’re looking at COVID and how it impacts a community, then you’re looking at the underlying conditions and the current situation that we’re dealing with. Obviously, when you deal with diabetes, obesity rates in our area, it’s gonna have a huge impact for someone who’s sick and dealing with those health issues.”
She said that underlying conditions led to more serious problems in the Rio Grande Valley.
“The underlying conditions just compounded the problem and, obviously, when you have that and then you don’t have access to care and then you have the hospital system without enough resources to be able to handle everything that’s coming at them, it’s very difficult,” Guajardo said. “You’re gonna have these types of results coming out of the pandemic.”
Cameron and Hidalgo counties make up 6.7% of Texas’ COVID-19 cases, according to covid.cdc.gov.
“Per capita, our numbers in terms of death are a lot higher, so I do believe that even our cases, they’re a lot higher,” she said. “Potentially, a lot of it is based on terms of death. A lot of it is based on some of the resources we have available.”
Guajardo said she believes resource availability in hospitals led to the high death rate in the Valley.
“For a minute there, all our hospitals were being taken over in terms of COVID patients and so it’s very difficult for them to keep up with the need,” she said.
The health administrator said between Cameron and Hidalgo counties, there are almost 70,000 total cases of COVID-19, while Dallas County has 93,000 cases.
“I would not be surprised that we are ranking up there against Houston, Dallas, Bexar County,” she said. “I mean, obviously we have a situation where people think ‘Oh, Harris county has 158,000,’ but how many millions of people do they have, and then in comparison to us.”
Guajardo said the bigger the county is, the more hospitals and resources that are available to the sick.
“[Bigger counties] had more resources available to them and then, of course, you also have the issues that we deal with in our area, lack of insurance, access to care,” she said. “Those are huge issues that we deal with here in Cameron County and along the border actually, but Cameron and Hidalgo, we’ve gotten hit pretty badly by that.”
