Jago Times "English Edition" Best Online Newspaper
Dallas County on Saturday reported 2,809 more coronavirus cases, all of them new. Five new COVID-19 deaths also were reported.
Arlington Police Department held a press event on the 25th anniversary of Amber Hagerman’s death…
The latest victims were a Dallas woman and a Grand Prairie man in their 50s, a Garland man in his 60s, a Dallas man and Dallas woman in their 80s. The older Dallas woman lived in a long-term care facility, and all of the victims had been hospitalized and had underlying health conditions.
Dallas County on Saturday also reported the first known case of the new, more contagious coronavirus variant, called B.1.1.7. The case was detected in a man in his 20s who had no recent travel history, health officials said. He will remain in isolation until he is cleared by health officials.
Of the new cases reported Saturday, 2,432 are confirmed and 377 are probable. The newly reported cases bring the county’s total confirmed cases to 206,329 and probable cases to 26,919. The county has recorded 1,858 COVID-19 deaths.
The county has said 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 Friday, 1,145 COVID-19 patients were in acute care in hospitals in the county. During the same period, 524 ER visits were for symptoms of the disease.
The county’s provisional seven-day average of daily new confirmed and probable cases for the Jan. 3-9 reporting period was 2,545, or 96.6 daily new cases per 100,000 residents. That’s a record high, county health officials said. The data is calculated by the date of the COVID-19 test collection.
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, 31.5% of people who showed up at hospitals with COVID-19 symptoms tested positive for the virus. That’s a slight increase from the previous reporting period, when 31.3% of patients tested positive.
Statewide data
Across the state, 24,003 more cases and 381 COVID-19 deaths were reported Saturday. Texas has now reported 2,097,560 total cases and 31,831 fatalities.
Of the new cases, 20,530 were confirmed and 3,473 were probable. The state has reported 1,837,552 confirmed cases and 260,008 probable cases.
The state also added 487 older confirmed cases and 167 older probable cases that were recently reported by labs.
There are 13,929 COVID-19 patients in Texas hospitals, including 3,931 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. On Friday, 23.55% of patients in the hospital region covering the Dallas-Fort Worth area were COVID-19 patients, according to the state dashboard.
The seven-day average positivity rate statewide for molecular tests, based on the date of test specimen collection, was 17.045% as of Friday. State health officials said using data based on when people were tested provides the most accurate positivity rate.
For antigen tests, the positivity rate for the same period was 11.39%.
Tarrant County
Tarrant County reported 3,023 coronavirus cases and eight new deaths Saturday.
Details about the victims were not immediately available.
The newly reported cases bring the county’s total to 190,886, including 165,131 confirmed cases, 25,755 probable cases and 136,190 recoveries. The death toll stands at 1,833.
According to Friday’s numbers on the county dashboard, 1,488 people are hospitalized with the virus.
Collin County
The state added 768 coronavirus cases and six new COVID-19 fatalities to Collin County’s totals Saturday. The county has now posted 62,571 cases and a death toll of 467.
No details about the latest victims were available.
Of the new cases, 639 were confirmed and 129 were probable. Collin County has recorded 54,209 confirmed cases and 8,362 probable cases. According to state data, the county has 5,822 active cases and has recorded 48,387 recoveries.
The county’s coronavirus dashboard provides only total hospitalizations, now at 546.
Denton County
Denton County reported 459 coronavirus cases — of which 447 are active — and no new deaths Saturday.
The newly reported cases bring the county’s total to 46,272, including 13,925 that are active and 32,098 that are recoveries. They also raise total molecular cases to 37,473 and antigen cases to 8,799.
The county’s death toll stands at 249.
Two hundred COVID-19 patients are hospitalized in the county.
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: 8,222 cases (6,873 confirmed and 1,349 probable), 73 deaths.
- Kaufman County: 11,450 cases (9,962 confirmed and 1,488 probable), 149 deaths.
- Ellis County: 16,403 cases (14,457 confirmed and 1,946 probable), 196 deaths.
- Johnson County: 14,435 cases (12,872 confirmed and 1,563 probable), 205 deaths.