Dallas County Adds 2,809 Coronavirus Cases, 5 COVID-19 Deaths; 8 dead in Tarrant, 6 in Collin

Updated at 6 p.m. to include Dallas County data.

Dallas County reported 2,809 more, all new cases of the coronavirus on Saturday. Five new deaths from COVID-19 have also been reported.

The latest victims were a Dallas woman and Grand Prairie man in his fifties, a Garland man in his sixties, a Dallas man, and a Dallas woman in her fifties. The older Dallas woman was living in a long-term care facility and all of the victims had been hospitalized and had underlying health issues.

Dallas County also reported the first known case of the new, more contagious variant of the coronavirus, known as B.1.1.7, on Saturday. The case was detected in a man in his 20s who had no recent travel history, health officials said. He will remain isolated until cleared by health authorities.

Of the new cases reported on Saturday, 2,432 are confirmed and 377 are probable. The newly reported cases bring the total number of confirmed cases in the county to 206,329 and probable cases to 26,919. The county has recorded 1,858 deaths from COVID-19.

The county said it only counts positive antigen tests (sometimes called rapid tests) as probable cases; some results on antibodies and “households” have been included previously.

While other counties in North Texas provide estimates of how many people have recovered from the virus, Dallas County officials are not reporting recoveries, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not use this metric.

Health officials are using hospitalizations, intensive care admissions and emergency room visits as key indicators 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 at county hospitals. During the same period, 524 emergency room visits were for symptoms of the disease.

The county’s provisional seven-day average of daily new confirmed and probable cases for the baseline period Jan. 3-9 was 2,545, or 96.6 new cases per day per 100,000 population. It’s a record, county health officials said. The data is calculated based on the date of collection of COVID-19 tests.

Dallas County does not provide positivity rates for all COVID-19 tests performed in the region; County health officials said they did not have an accurate tally of how many tests were done each day. But as of the county’s latest reporting period, 31.5% of people who presented to hospitals with symptoms of COVID-19 have tested positive for the virus. This is a slight increase from the previous baseline period, when 31.3% of patients tested positive.

State-wide data

Statewide, an additional 24,003 cases and 381 deaths from COVID-19 were reported on Saturday. Texas has now reported 2,097,560 total cases and 31,831 deaths.

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 recently reported by labs.

There are 13,929 patients with COVID-19 in Texas hospitals, including 3,931 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. As of Friday, 23.55% of patients in the hospital region covering the Dallas-Fort Worth area were COVID-19 patients, according to the state’s dashboard.

The statewide seven-day average positivity rate for molecular testing, based on the date the test specimens were collected, was 17.045% on Friday. State health officials have said using data based on when people were tested provides the most accurate rate of positivity.

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 on Saturday.

Details of the casualties 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 1833.

According to figures on Friday’s county dashboard, 1,488 people are hospitalized with the virus.

Collin County

The state added 768 coronavirus cases and six new COVID-19 deaths to the Collin County totals on Saturday. The county has now recorded 62,571 cases and a death toll of 467.

No details on the latest casualties 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 only provides total hospitalizations, now at 546.

Denton County

Denton County reported 459 cases of the coronavirus – of which 447 are active – and no new deaths on Saturday.

The newly reported cases bring the county’s total to 46,272, with 13,925 ongoing and 32,098 in recovery. They also bring the total number of molecular cases to 37,473 and cases of antigens 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 have resumed reporting for these other North Texas counties. In some countries, new data may not be communicated 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.