Eighty-five children under one-year-old have been infected with coronavirus in Nueces County in Texas, with another infant under six months old who died of the disease, Daily Mail reports. This was revealed by Nueces County Public Health Director, Annette Rodriguez, who advised people to stay more at home to stop the spread of the pandemic. She also advised people to keep their children at home while going shopping or any public place where chances of contracting the infection are high.
In a particular case, a newborn whose mother had the disease also got infected, and is undergoing treatment, Rodriguez said. How the other children contracted the disease was not revealed, but it speaks to the rising cases of the pandemic in Texas which now has 317,730 positive cases and 3,865 deaths, with Nueces County reporting 8,176 cases in total.
“These babies have not even had their first birthday yet,” Rodriguez stated. “Please help us to stop the spread of this disease. These children are not two yet, they are under one. They cannot wear a mask and so they are unprotected.”
USA Today wrote that the total number of children under the age of one who are now positive to COVID-19 in the US is 1% of the total number of cases in the country. The Nueces County Medical Examiner, Adel Shaker, stated that a child below six months died of the disease earlier this month in the county, and urged parents to constantly observe recommended health protocols by washing their hands, observing physical distancing, and wearing face masks.
“Nueces County has the fastest growth in new cases on the seven-day average than any other metropolitan county in the state,” said Corpus Christi city manager Peter Zanoni. “You can see the trend line is relatively flat until July, and this is where we have had that huge spike in cases, and this is why it’s turned into a major problem for Nueces County.”
Given the rising cases of the pandemic in Texas, local health officials have been calling on Gov. Greg Abbott to enable individual counties to lockdown as well as implement other safety protocols that would protect people from getting infected. Reports say counties such as Hidalgo and Cameron have been witnessing high incidences to the extent that refrigerated trucks are called in to preserve bodies of victims.
According to the health officials, the governor should also halt the reopening of the state to halt the spread of the disease.
“Your office should take immediate action to rewind the efforts to reopen the state quickly; which came about by ignoring CDC guidelines,” state representatives Sheila Jackson Lee and Joaquin Castro wrote to Abbott. “We need to provide local authority to local counties and cities to do what is in the best interest of their communities.”
Source: dailymail.co.uk
