Pete Mendoza
Cameron County Annex building in San Benito, Texas
Three-thousand-forty-three COVID-19 cases were recorded in Cameron county in January 2024. That’s an increase of 69% from December 2023. While the disease has not dominated headlines, it remains a concern among public health officials.
Cameron County Public Health Preparedness Director Ashley Gomez says the increase is a result of a new COVID-19 variant.
“There is the variant that has been circulating,” Gomez said. “The new ‘JN.1’ which is part of Omicron but it’s a different lineage.”
She says the ‘JN.1’ variant presents the same symptoms as COVID-19, however it spreads much quicker than its predecessor.
Integrated health science freshman Roosevelt Varela Castillo says he knew the variant has been going around.
“Mostly everyone’s been getting sick lately,” Varela Castillo said. “I can include myself. I was feeling kind of bad like two weeks ago.”
Gomez said the variant can lead to other possible respiratory issues.
According to John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health website the JN.1 variant originated from the BA.2.86 variant. This variant already has around 30 different mutations.
Gomez says the increase most likely spread due to individual choices during the holiday season.
“Usually we do see waves around the holiday season,” she said. “Because people are gathering for the holidays, Christmas, New Year’s, children are going back to school, people are traveling so that’s usually when we see that spike of cases.”
Gomez says the Cameron County Public Health Department tracks reports of COVID-19 cases and other types of notifiable conditions and analyzes the data.
She says their main targets are settings where individuals are in close proximity to each other, such as hospitals, nursing homes, schools and jails.
Gomez says people should keep following recommended preventative measures to protect against this disease.
“Just making sure that our community [knows] of course the symptoms,” she said. “How to prevent the spread, staying up to date with the vaccines, and just making sure once you know that you are feeling sick or something’s not feeling right to get tested whether it’s for COVID-19 or any other type of respiratory disease or not disease, but illness.”
For more information about COVID-19 visit cameroncountytx.gov.
This is Pete Mendoza for Vaquero Radio.
