RIO GRANDE CITY – COVID-19 rapid testing kits are on the way to Starr County.
According to The Monitor, the tests will be used at a drive-thru testing facility in the South Texas College’s Starr County campus parking lot.
Dr. Jose Vazquez, president of the Starr County Memorial Hospital Board, said he expects to see the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 increase once the rapid testing kits are available, according to The Monitor.
“A lot of people will want to have a quick result and we are going to be capable of doing that in the next couple of days,” Vazquez said.
Thus far, the number of people coming forward to be tested is very low, according to Vazquez.
“We didn’t see that many people in the clinics, and in the testing facility, maybe two on Saturday and two on Sunday,” Vazquez told The Monitor.
Vazquez said he believes based on the current COVID-19 testing turnout that there are not too many people in Starr County suffering from the virus. As of April 14, Texas reported 14,624 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including 318 deaths. Starr County has seven confirmed cases of COVID-19.
The ages of the individuals who have tested positive in Starr County range between 16 and 46 years old. One of the victims had come back home after traveling to Louisiana, which is a state that has been hit hard by the pandemic. Many of the victims reside in the Rio Grande City area and one COVID-19 positive person lives in Roma.
Altru Diagnostic Inc. is supplying the RT-PCR, or reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, testing kits and the rapid testing kits.
At least 25 percent of people show no signs of having the virus, according to Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other data shows the number of people that are asymptomatic could be as high as 50 percent, according to Fox News.
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