El Paso's COVID-19 death rate highest among big Texas counties

El Paso Inc. initially calculated the rates for Texas counties, and Dr. Hector Ocaranza, the city/county health authority, confirmed them with his own figures nearly two weeks ago, showing El Paso had slightly fewer cases than the much larger Bexar County but twice the death rate.

San Antonio’s Bexar County has a population of 2.1 million – more than twice El Paso’s – and had 74 deaths when Ocaranza prepared his chart two weeks ago, for a rate of 3.5 deaths per 100,000 residents.

Then, El Paso had 80 deaths for a rate of 9.1 deaths per 100,000 persons – 2.6 times higher than Bexar County and the highest in the state.

Dallas County, population 2.7 million, was second among the major counties with a mortality rate of 8.4 per 100,000 residents.

According to the latest data, reported Friday, El Paso County has had 3,695 confirmed cases of COVID-19 for a rate of 422 per 100,000 and 98 deaths – a mortality rate of 11.2.

Bexar County is still behind El Paso with 168 cases per 100,000 and a death rate of 3.8.

So, what’s going on?

“The case rate can be very tightly related to the amount of testing that has been done,” Ocaranza said. “We’ve done 25% more than Bexar County.”

At the time, 27,377 people in El Paso County had been tested for COVID-19 for a rate of 31.2 per 1,000, compared with Bexar County’s 25.1 rate.

“Naturally we’re going to be finding a lot more cases,” he said.

But Ocaranza’s figures, provided by the state, showed that Dallas and Harris counties, with a combined population of nearly 7.7 million, were testing at slightly higher rates than El Paso.

Death counts aren’t influenced by the testing of live subjects, but Ocaranza pointed to El Paso’s particular circumstances to explain the higher rate, chiefly a largely Hispanic population that puts local residents at a greater risk of death from COVID-19 than other parts of the state.

“We Hispanics have a very high prevalence of diabetes, high blood pressure, also obesity that makes us more at risk of developing severe complications or even death,” he said.

However, there is another factor in the counting of deaths that may work in El Paso’s favor. People who do not live in El Paso County but who die here are being excluded from El Paso’s statistics.

“That is correct,” Ocaranza said, adding, “It’s not very significant.”

He attributed the practice to the state health department.

The city last released that data on May 16. At the time, there were 1,726 confirmed COVID-19 cases in El Paso County. Not counted in that number, were 44 people from communities outside of El Paso County. Twenty-five were residents of Chihuahua, Mexico, 17 were New Mexico residents, and two were Texas residents from outside of El Paso County.

A local medical official who asked not to be named challenged the practice of not including the COVID-19 related deaths in El Paso that involve people who were from somewhere else, such as Juárez, in El Paso’s count.

“So, and I can tell you for a fact that at all our hospitals, we have had non-El Paso addresses that did not get counted in the Department of Health numbers,” he said. “Statistically, nobody knows they even existed.

“Are there El Paso citizens that are dying elsewhere that we don’t even know about? I would like to see something that shows not only El Paso deaths, but those who died within El Paso with addresses elsewhere.”

Email El Paso Inc. reporter David Crowder at dcrowder@elpasoinc.com or call (915) 630-6622.