Says two patients at Valley Regional Medical Center in Brownsville, Texas, “are being looked at” for possible coronavirus infections.
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No, a Brownsville, Texas hospital isn’t treating two coronavirus patients
If Your Time is short
- Health officials say there are no coronavirus patients in the Rio Grande Valley.
- Texas is not among the states where the CDC is reporting coronavirus cases.
Has there been an outbreak of misinformation about the coronavirus in your town? We’ve already debunked claims of cases in Gainesville, Fla., and Mississippi, among others.
Now, a March 2 Facebook post claims that "Coronavirus may be in Brownsville, Texas."
"Two patients in Valley Regional Medical Center are being looked at for the possible virus that has been spreading throughout the globe," it continues.
This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
The post appears to be a screenshot of another post published by the account Brownsville Online, which describes itself as a digital community featuring news about Brownsville. But we didn’t see any posts there claiming two possible coronavirus cases at Valley Regional Medical Center.
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A spokesperson for the hospital did not immediately return PolitiFact’s call about the Facebook post. But health officials in the area have said and continue to say that there are no cases of coronavirus in the Rio Grande Valley.
Hidalgo County, which is adjacent to Brownsville’s Cameron County, has specifically called out social media posts for spreading bad intel.
"Misinformation on social media," the county’s health and human services department tweeted on March 2. "THERE IS NO #CoV19 in the RGV."
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As of March 3, Texas was not one of 12 states reporting cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
KRGV, a local news station in the Rio Grande Valley, reported on March 2 that Cameron County health officials also confirmed that there were no cases of the virus there.
The station quotes a statement from the Valley Regional Medical Center saying it doesn’t "have any patients that have tested positive for COVID-19."
We rate this Facebook post False.
Our Sources
Facebook post, March 2, 2020
Brownsville Online Facebook account, visited March 3, 2020
Hidalgo County Health & Human Services tweet, March 2, 2020
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the U.S., updated March 3, 2020
KRGV, Health officials: No cases of coronavirus in the Valley, March 2, 2020
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No, a Brownsville, Texas hospital isn’t treating two coronavirus patients
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