The chief executive of Nueces County, Texas, clarified over the weekend that Corpus Christi and its surrounding county have found 85 children under age 1 who tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began in mid-March. "We have not had a sudden surge of 85 infants testing positive," Judge Barbara Canales said in a statement, but the number does "illustrate that no one is naturally immune to this virus." The 85 cases is about 1 percent of the 8,407 recorded in the county. More than 4,000 of those cases were reported in the past two weeks.
On Friday, Nueces County public health director Annette Rodriguez had said at a press conference that "we currently have 85 babies under the age of 1 year in Nueces County that have all tested positive for COVID-19, adding, "Please help us stop the spread of this disease." One six-month-old baby who tested positive died, though an autopsy will be performed to clarify the cause of death.
The Corpus Christi area is now one of the COVID-19 hot spots in a state where the virus is spreading out of control. "Nueces County has the fastest growth in new cases on the seven-day average than any other metropolitan county in the state," Corpus Christi city manager Peter Zanoni told CNN. "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."
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