By Juan Montoya
In a stunning turnaround, Cameron County Judge and Chief Medical Officer Dr. James Castillo today warned county residents to expect the numbers of reported deaths to dramatically surge upward as additional personnel assist the health department to gather information from doctors, hospitals and funeral homes.
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Treviño also said that the county is "looking at" reports of party boats over the weekend in the Laguna with between 70 to 90 people, the vast majority not wearing face masks or practicing social distancing to see what they can do to stop the violation of the county orders.
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In a stunning turnaround, Cameron County Judge and Chief Medical Officer Dr. James Castillo today warned county residents to expect the numbers of reported deaths to dramatically surge upward as additional personnel assist the health department to gather information from doctors, hospitals and funeral homes.
"The numbers of deaths you're seeing now are from June and early July," admitted Castillo, adding that as the additional workers gather the details of the deaths, "we're going to be catching up those very soon. These numbers are weeks old."
"Those numbers are going to go up this week a lot," he warned. "They'll be much worse than what we're able to show you."
Castillo said that based on the estimated 6,000 positive cases in the county, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that it will result in about a 5 percent death rate, or about 300 deaths.
"You can expect 300 deaths while we are only reporting 96,"Castillo said, denying that the department was engaged in a conspiracy to hide the numbers and that county officials were not being transparent.
"If you are waiting for something to get really bad, it's here. Please change."
"We know we are far behind," Treviño said, "by several hundred."
Castillo said that the CDC estimates that the number of positive cases recorded in any given community can be multiplied by 10 to come to a believable estimate of the infection there.
"We have had 5,891 tested positive, which means that there are some 58,000 people with the virus in Cameron County. You cannot go to many places without encountering this virus."
Treviño also said that the county is "looking at" reports of party boats over the weekend in the Laguna with between 70 to 90 people, the vast majority not wearing face masks or practicing social distancing to see what they can do to stop the violation of the county orders."There's been pushback on the wearing of face masks and stay in place orders," he said. "I'm experiencing this with the (SP) Island...Those people on the boat are not following our mandate."
And he said that if only one person on the party boat was asymptomatic, he might have passed it on to other people on the boat who in turn would have carried it to their homes in the communities in the rest of the valley.
Additionally, he said that he had also had reports of scores of cars parking between the access roads to the beach and simply crossing over the dunes to get to the unguarded beach. The access entries to the parks are closed as per county orders.
"This is a disgrace that should not be happening," he said in Spanish to a reporter for a Mexican news medium. "Es una desgracia."
Trevino said he would be talking to the Texas General Land Office and officials from the Texas Parks and Wildlife to address the problem and to enforce the order issued regarding the closing of the county's beaches.