Fake news strikes again.
A viral news story claiming infants in the state of Texas experienced a surge in positive coronavirus infections is false.
The fake news: at a press conference last Friday top medical professionals in the Corpus Christi area claimed the county has 85 cases of newborns with coronavirus.
Annette Rodriguez, director of public health for Corpus Christi Nueces County, said, "We currently have 85 babies under the age of one year in Nueces County that have all tested positive for COVID-19. These babies have not even had their first birthday yet. Please help us stop the spread of this disease."
Obviously this was pretty alarming news. Generally babies aren't the group of people who tend to be affected by this disease. CNN, CBS News, Huffington Post, The Hill, and the Associated Press all ran stories claiming babies in Texas are in dire straights.
But it turns out the news was a distortion of the truth.
Canales said that 85 infants have tested positive for COVID-19 since the outbreak of the pandemic several months ago.
“On Friday, July 17, during a press conference, a spokesperson mentioned that 85 infants under the age of one had tested positive for coronavirus,” Canales said in a statement, KRIS 6 reported. “This number reflects the cumulative total of positive tests for infants under the age of 1 since the beginning of testing in mid-March, which has resulted in 8,171 positive test results.”
“Stating this number during our press conference led many to believe that we had a sudden surge in infants under the age of one testing positive. We have NOT had a sudden surge of 85 infants testing positive,” she said.
Residents in vehicles wait in line to receive food at a Kelly Center for Hunger Relief distribution site at a church in El Paso, Texas, U.S., on Friday, July, 17, 2020. The coronavirus pandemic is expected to continue growing the amount of people who are food insecure. Feeding America projects one in six adults and a quarter of all children may experience food insecurity this year. Photographer: Joel Angel Juarez/Bloomberg via Getty Images