Lack of honesty by some infected with virus hampers El Paso’s efforts to find others exposed

EL PASO, Texas -- It's a diagnosis no one wants to get, but that 7,400 El Pasoans have already received in the form of a positive test for the coronavirus.

While that diagnosis in and of itself may be alarming, the cooperation from the patient is just as crucial, El Paso health officials say. At times, they are having to deal with patients they say are not forthcoming when it comes to helping with the epidemiological investigation.

"The moment a patient tests positive for Covid-19 we begin the epidemiological investigation, we start reaching out to the individual that has tested positive," explains Laura Cruz-Acosta, spokesperson for the city of El Paso and the health department. "Who do you live with? Who were the folks you were involved with in the past days? Because one of the key things we want to look at is to determine who else could potentially have Covid-19."

El Paso Mayor Dee Margo also highlights the importance of disclosing all travel, including to Ciudad Juarez, because otherwise it'll skew the data the city has collected to develop cluster maps.

“Please be honest and candid because what concerns me is I don’t know how much of our positives may be from people visiting family and friends in Juarez and coming back. The more we know, the better off we are going to be,” Margo said.

Health leaders tell ABC-7 that Covid patients have often mislead officials by lying about their permanent residence, which hampers the ability of El Paso and Juarez officials to work together to combat the outbreak. Officials added they are not looking to deport anyone.

Another issue health officials have been running into are Covid-positive individuals not disclosing when they've attended a party or other gathering.

“It’s critical. It allows us to identify any particular trend or hot-spot that we can then deal with and the 20 to 30’s have still been the majority of the positives. The last time I got the data, it was 46% of our positives were people 20 to 30 years of age,” Margo said.

Officials emphasized that disclosing the fact that you went to a party or gathering will not result in you receiving a fine or citation.

"In order for us to be able to survive this disease in a much more successful way, we have to be honest where we have been and who we came into contact with" Cruz-Acosta observed. "We are not going to come back at you and say 'you violated the rule and now we are going to cite you.' No, that's not the purpose of this list of questions, its strictly to enable us to track down the virus and help slow the spread."