County Reports 1,589 New COVID-19 Cases Tuesday
County health officials reported Tuesday that an additional 1,589 people have tested positive for COVID-19 – 1,351 confirmed cases and 238 probable cases.
An additional 16 deaths were reported, moving the fatalities associated with the virus to 1,887.
Among the dead are an Irving man in his 40s, a Mesquite woman in her 50s, two Dallas men in their 50s, a Hutchins woman in her 60s, a Dallas woman in her 60s, a Dallas man in his 60s, two Dallas women in their 70s, a Garland man in his 70s, a Grand Prairie man in his 80s, and a Dallas woman in her 80s.
There are 111 active long-term care facility outbreaks, with a total of 3,453 residents and 1,982 healthcare workers have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Of these, 717 have been hospitalized and 386 have died.
About 22% of all deaths reported to date have been associated with long-term care facilities, including a woman in her 60s who lived in a Richardson facility and had no underlying high-risk health conditions and a man in his 80s who lived in a Garland facility.
“Today we report 1,589 new COVID cases and 16 additional deaths,” said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. “Updated modeling from UT Southwestern predicts that Dallas County could have up to 1,440 hospitalized COVID patients and 2,700 new daily COVID cases by January 29.
“In addition, they show that physical distancing, mask wearing and other prevention measures have decreased transmission of COVID-19 about 65%. This is encouraging, but we must remain vigilant in our efforts to stop and slow the spread of this virus, since they also show that hospitalizations have increased 53% compared to one month ago.”
The county said that the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations Monday was 1,160 patients. Emergency room visits for COVID-19 symptoms represented about 23% of all ER visits, according to information reported to the North Central Texas Trauma Regional Advisory Council.
The provisional seven-day average of daily new confirmed and probable cases (by date of test collection) for the CDC week ending Jan. 9 was 2,545, which is a rate of 96.6 daily new cases per 100,000 residents. Almost 32% of symptomatic patients presenting to area hospitals tested positive.
Over the past 30 days, there have been 7,310 COVID-19 cases in school-aged children and staff reported from 674 separate K-12 schools in Dallas County, with 1,842 of these cases reported during the last week of December. Since the beginning of the pandemic, a total of 41 cases of COVID-19 have been reported among school nurses and nurse assistants.
One COVID-19 outbreak in a school in December originated with spread among 11 staff members, with transmission to 10 students, and in turn another 13 household members of these students and staff. One death and one hospitalization occurred from this outbreak, the county said.
Officials said that as of Tuesday morning, 12,122 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been given at the Fair Park mega-clinic, and the county has about 6,000 doses for this week.
