Dallas County adds 2,809 coronavirus cases, 5 deaths from COVID-19; 8 fatalities in Tarrant, 6 in Collin

Updated at 6pm to include data from Dallas County.

Dallas County reported an additional 2,809 coronavirus cases on Saturday, all of which were new. Five new deaths from COVID-19 have also been reported.

The latest victims were a woman from Dallas and a man from Grand Prairie in her 50s, a man from Garland in her 60s, a man from Dallas and a woman from Dallas in her 80s. The oldest woman in Dallas lived in a long-term care facility and all of the victims had been hospitalized and had latent health problems.

Dallas County also reported on Saturday the first known case of the most contagious new variant of the coronavirus, called B.1.1.7. The case was detected in a 20-year-old man who had no recent travel history, health officials said. He will remain isolated until released by health officials.

Of the new cases notified on Saturday, 2,432 have been confirmed and 377 are likely. New reported cases bring the total confirmed cases in the county to 206,329 and probable cases to 26,919. The county recorded 1,858 COVID-19 deaths.

The county said it is counting only positive antigen tests (sometimes called rapid tests) as probable cases; some antibody and “household” results have been included previously.

While other counties in northern Texas provide estimates of 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 this metric.

Health officials use hospitalizations, intensive care admissions and visits to emergency rooms as key indicators to track the real-time impact of COVID-19 in the county. In the 24-hour period ended on Friday, 1,145 patients with COVID-19 were in intensive care at hospitals in the municipality. During the same period, 524 visits to the emergency room were for symptoms of the disease.

The county’s seven-day provisional average of new confirmed and probable daily cases for the January 3-9 reporting period was 2,545, or 96.6 new daily cases per 100,000 residents. It is a record, county health officials said. Data are calculated up to the date of collection of the COVID-19 test.

Dallas County does not provide a positivity rate for all COVID-19 tests performed in the area; County health officials said they did not have an accurate count of how many tests are performed each day. But in the county’s most recent reporting period, 31.5% of people who came to hospitals with symptoms of COVID-19 tested positive for the virus. This is a small increase over the previous reporting period, when 31.3% of patients tested positive.

State data

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

Of the new cases, 20,530 were confirmed and 3,473 were likely. The state notified 1,837,552 confirmed cases and 260,008 probable cases.

The state also added 487 oldest confirmed cases and 167 oldest probable cases that were recently reported by laboratories.

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

The seven-day average positivity rate across the state for molecular testing, based on the date of collection of the test sample, was 17.045% on Friday. State health officials 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 cases of coronavirus and eight new deaths on Saturday.

Details about the victims were not immediately available.

The new reported cases bring the county total to 190,886, including 165,131 confirmed cases, 25,755 probable cases and 136,190 recoveries. The death toll is 1,833.

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

Collin County

The state added 768 cases of coronavirus and six new deaths from COVID-19 to the Collin County total on Saturday. The county has already registered 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 likely. Collin County recorded 54,209 confirmed cases and 8,362 probable cases. According to state data, the municipality has 5,822 active cases and recorded 48,387 recoveries.

The county coronavirus panel provides only the total number of hospitalizations, now at 546.

Denton County

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

Recently reported cases bring the county total to 46,272, including 13,925 active and 32,098 in recovery. They also increase the total molecular cases to 37,473 and the antigen cases to 8,799.

The death toll in the county is 249.

Two hundred patients with COVID-19 are hospitalized in the county.

Other counties

The Texas Department of Health Services has taken over the reports for these other northern Texas counties. In some counties, new data may not be reported every day.

The last numbers are:

• Rockwall County: 8,222 cases (6,873 confirmed and 1,349 likely), 73 deaths.
• Kaufman County: 11,450 cases (9,962 confirmed and 1,488 likely), 149 deaths.
• Ellis County: 16,403 cases (14,457 confirmed and 1,946 likely), 196 deaths.
• Johnson County: 14,435 cases (12,872 confirmed and 1,563 probable), 205 deaths.