Texas exceeds 2 million total coronavirus cases; Dallas County records 21 deaths, killing more than 1,800

With the addition of nearly 27,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, Texas surpassed more than 2 million total cases during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Dallas County reported 2,994 new coronavirus cases and 21 new COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, bringing the county’s death toll to more than 1,800.

Ten of the victims were residents of Dallas: a woman in his 40s, a man in his 50s, a man and woman in their 60s, a man and woman in their 60s, three men in their 40s and a man in their 40s .

The other 11 victims include a Glenn Heights man in his forties, a Richardson woman in his fifties, a Grand Prairie man in his fifties, a Duncanville man in his sixties, a Grand Prairie man in his sixties, an Irving man in his sixties, a Richardson man in his sixties, a Garland man in his sixties, a Duncanville man in his sixties, a Carrollton man in his sixties and a DeSoto woman in the eighties.

All but one of the victims had underlying health issues, the county said.

Of the cases added Wednesday in Dallas County, 2,589 were confirmed and 405 were probable. The newly reported cases bring the total number of confirmed cases in the county to 199,948 and probable cases to 25,681. The county has recorded 1,812 deaths from COVID-19.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said UT Southwestern Medical Center updated its coronavirus prediction models to show that by January 22 the county could have up to 1,900 patients hospitalized for COVID -19 and about 3600 new cases per day.

“These are worrying numbers,” Jenkins said in a written statement. “Our hospitals are very limited right now and our health heroes have been working tirelessly since last spring.”

The county said it only counted 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 federal 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 on Tuesday, 1,197 patients with COVID-19 were in acute care at county hospitals. During the same period, 572 emergency room visits were for symptoms of the disease.

The county reported that in the past 30 days, 7,310 school-aged children have tested positive for COVID-19 at 674 Dallas County schools, with 1,842 cases reported in the last week of December. A total of 41 cases have been reported among school nurses and licensed practical nurses, of which 19 were diagnosed last week, the county said.

The county’s provisional seven-day average of new confirmed and probable cases daily for the period December 27 to January. 2 baseline period was 2,227. The figure is calculated based on the date of COVID-19 test collection, according to the county.

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 in the county’s latest reporting period, 31% of people who presented to hospitals with symptoms of COVID-19 tested positive for the virus.

State-wide data

Statewide, an additional 26,808 cases and 405 deaths from COVID-19 were reported on Wednesday. Texas has now reported 2,022,635 total cases and 30,624 deaths.

Of the new cases, 22,270 were confirmed and 4,538 were probable. The state has reported 1,775,619 confirmed cases and 247,016 probable cases.

The state also added 290 older confirmed cases and 245 older probable cases that were recently reported by labs.

There are 14,106 COVID-19 patients in Texas hospitals, including 4,104 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. As of Tuesday, 25.04% 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 samples were collected, was 17.89% on Tuesday. State health officials have said that 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 13.02%.

Tarrant County

Tarrant County reported 2,286 coronavirus cases and 15 new deaths on Wednesday.

The latest victims include an Arlington man, a Fort Worth woman, a Hurst woman and a North Richland Hills woman in her sixties; a woman from Arlington and a man and woman from Fort Worth in their sixties; a man from Fort Worth, a woman from Richland Hills and a man and woman from Bedford in their 80s; and two women from Arlington, a Mansfield woman and a Pantego man in their 90s.

All but three of the victims had underlying health problems.

The newly reported cases bring the county’s total to 183,080, including 158,423 confirmed cases, 24,657 probable cases and 130,469 recoveries. The death toll stands at 1777.

According to figures on Wednesday’s county dashboard, 1,446 people are hospitalized with the virus.

Collin County

The state added 1,299 coronavirus cases and 11 new COVID-19 deaths to Collin County’s totals on Wednesday. The county has now recorded 60,267 cases and a death toll of 439.

No details on the latest casualties were available.

Of the new cases, 726 were confirmed and 573 were probable. Collin County has recorded 52,566 confirmed cases and 7,701 probable cases. According to state data, the county has 5,754 active cases and recorded 46,812 recoveries.

The county’s coronavirus dashboard only provides total hospitalizations, currently at 552.

Denton County

Denton County reported 650 cases of the coronavirus – of which 529 are active – and zero new deaths on Wednesday.

The new cases reported bring the county total to 44,808, with 13,580 ongoing and 30,991 in recovery. They also bring the total number of molecular cases to 36,467 and the antigen cases to 8,341.

The county’s death toll stands at 237.

There are 231 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, the county reports.

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: 7,876 cases (6,596 confirmed and 1,280 probable), 64 deaths.
• Kaufman County: 11,066 cases (9,662 confirmed and 1,404 probable), 146 deaths.
• Ellis County: 15,799 cases (13,933 confirmed and 1,866 probable), 187 deaths.
• Johnson County: 13,744 cases (12,258 confirmed and 1,486 probable), 191 deaths.