HIV Plus Daily News Oct. 5-7, 2007 The hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccine was introduced in 1982, and since then the national rate of new cases has fallen. However, Bexar County still has high rates of HBV. In 2005, the county recorded 127 new cases, for a rate of 8.6 cases per 100,000 population, which is 2.5 times higher than for Texas and about five times higher than the rest of the nation. The article quotes Miriam Alter, an infectious-diseases epidemiology professor at UTMB.