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Dallas County on Wednesday reported 1,304 more coronavirus cases, all of them considered new. Three new COVID-19 deaths were also reported.
It was the third straight day — and the fourth in the last six — that the county reported more than 1,200 cases.
“We are at a very dangerous point in the fight against COVID,” County Judge Clay Jenkins said in a written statement. “We are staring down the barrel of the largest spike that we have seen to date in COVID cases.”
Labs either report coronavirus cases directly to the county health department or to the state health department, which then relays the information to individual counties.
The latest victims all lived in Dallas. They include a man in his 70s and a woman in her 80s who had underlying health problems and a man in his 60s who did not.
Of the new cases reported Wednesday, 926 are confirmed and 378 are probable. The newly reported cases bring the county’s total confirmed cases to 105,377 and probable cases to 8,931. The county has recorded 1,138 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and 19 probable deaths.
The county recently announced it is counting only positive antigen tests (sometimes called rapid tests) as probable cases; a few antibody and “household” results were included previously.
While other North Texas counties provide estimates for how many people have recovered from the virus, Dallas County officials do not report recoveries, noting that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not use that metric.
Health officials use hospitalizations, intensive-care admissions and emergency room visits as key metrics to track the real-time impact of COVID-19 in the county. In the 24-hour period that ended Tuesday, 579 COVID-19 patients were in acute care in hospitals in the county — up from 479 the day before. During the same period, 574 ER visits were for symptoms of the disease — up from 431.
Jenkins said that Tuesday was the “second biggest jump in hospitalizations” that county officials had seen in the whole pandemic.
He also urged local businesses, if possible, to make a swift shift to having employees telecommute.
If the county could reach 65% compliance on telecommuting, Jenkins said, the area’s R0 number could dip back to 1 and “stop this incredible increase in COVID cases.” Pronounced “R naught,” R0 estimates how many people, on average, an infectious disease carrier will infect. If the number is above one, the epidemic is growing; below one, it is declining.
Dallas County’s provisional seven-day average of daily new confirmed and probable cases for the latest reporting period, Oct. 25-31, was 779. The figure is calculated by the date of the COVID-19 test collection, according to the county.
The county reported that during the same reporting period, 608 school-age children tested positive — an “almost twofold increase” from reports four weeks ago, according to county officials.
Dallas County doesn’t provide a positivity rate for all COVID-19 tests conducted in the area; county health officials have said they don’t have an accurate count of how many tests are conducted each day. But as of the county’s most recent reporting period, 14.8% of people who showed up at hospitals with COVID-19 symptoms tested positive for the virus. That’s a decrease from the previous reporting period, when 15.4% such patients tested positive.
Statewide data
Across the state, 10,097 more coronavirus cases and 141 more COVID-19 deaths were reported Wednesday.
Although Johns Hopkins University of Medicine’s Coronavirus Research Center and some media have said Texas has surpassed 1 million COVID-19 cases, the state’s numbers stand at 985,380. Delays and differences in reporting have led to discrepancies in case counts nationwide.
The state’s death toll now stands at 19,004.
There are 6,779 COVID-19 patients in Texas hospitals — an increase of 609 statewide in the past 24 hours — including 1,929 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
The seven-day average positivity rate statewide, based on the date of test specimen collection, was 12.1% as of Tuesday. State health officials said using data based on when people were tested provides the most accurate positivity rate.
The state also provides a positivity rate based on when lab results were reported to the state; that rate stood at 12.6% on Tuesday.
Officials previously calculated Texas’ coronavirus positivity rate by dividing the most recent seven days of new positive test results by the most recent seven days of total new test results. By that measure, the positivity rate is now 8.8%, according to the state dashboard.
A spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services said that positivity rate data based on lab results and new cases will likely be phased out but is still being provided for transparency and continuity purposes.
Tarrant County
Tarrant County reported 752 coronavirus cases and nine new deaths Wednesday.
It’s the county’s highest single-day death toll in nearly two months. County officials reported 13 COVID-19 fatalities on Sept. 19 — though seven of those deaths occurred in previous months.
The latest victims all had underlying health problems. They include six Fort Worth residents — a man and woman in their 60s, two men and a woman in their 70s, and a woman in her 80s.
The other victims were a White Settlement man in his 50s, an Arlington woman in her 70s and a Bedford woman in her 70s.
The newly reported cases bring the county’s total to 76,838, including 68,726 confirmed cases, 8,112 probable cases and 59,023 recoveries. The death toll stands at 777.
According to Wednesday’s numbers on the county dashboard, 673 people are hospitalized with the virus.
Collin County
The state added 428 coronavirus cases to Collin County’s total Wednesday, bringing the tally to 20,888. Four new COVID-19 fatalities also were reported, bringing the county’s death toll to 205.
According to state data, the county has 1,873 active cases of the virus and has recorded 19,015 recoveries.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Collin County’s coronavirus dashboard had been considerably scaled back. After turning over case management to DSHS in June, the county put a note on its dashboard warning residents that it had low confidence in numbers provided by the state.
The site now only provides total hospitalizations, currently at 275. It also provides a link to the state dashboard.
Denton County
Denton County reported 294 coronavirus cases — one of the county’s highest single-day totals of the pandemic — and no new deaths Wednesday. Of the newly reported cases, 176 are active.
Only once during the pandemic did the county add more cases in a single day. On Oct. 6, county officials began reporting antigen test results. Of the 1,240 newly reported cases that day, 493 were considered active.
The newly reported cases bring the county’s total to 18,892, including 3,556 that are active and 15,194 that are recoveries. The death toll stands at 142.
The newly reported cases raised the county’s total molecular cases to 16,350, while antigen cases stand at 2,542.
For the second straight day, the county set a daily record for hospitalizations, reporting 117 hospitalized COVID-19 patients — an increase of 12 from the day before.
Over the last week, COVID-19 patients have occupied 11.1% of the county’s total inpatient beds — also an all-time high.
The county has 12 adult ICU beds remaining. However, 228 additional inpatient beds are still available, county data shows. A county spokeswoman said those beds could be used to serve COVID patients if necessary.
Other counties
The Texas Department of State Health Services has taken over reporting for these other North Texas counties. In some counties, new data may not be reported every day.
The latest numbers are:
- Rockwall County: 2,232 cases, 34 deaths
- Kaufman County: 3,904 cases, 69 deaths
- Ellis County: 5,530 cases, 95 deaths
- Johnson County: 4,185 cases, 72 deaths