The Dallas County Health Department is reporting 31 COVID-19 deaths Tuesday along with 641 new cases of the virus. Despite the high number of fatalities and uptick in new cases, the data reported by the county health department shows continued drops in the 7-day and 14-day averages for new cases.
Information on the 31 latest victims of the pandemic will be released Tuesday afternoon. Check back and refresh this article for the update.
The 641 new cases reported Tuesday are more than the 382 new cases reported Monday, but are lower than both the 7-day average of 586 cases and the 14-day average of 650 cases. The 7-day average has now declined for four days straight while the 14-day average has dropped each day for the last 10 days.
Jenkins said Monday there has been a decrease in visits to the COVID-19 testing sites and that there is plenty of testing capacity available, low wait times and relatively fast turnaround times on tests with most people getting results in two or three days. On Tuesday, he tweeted there was no wait at one testing center in particular.
The county has now accumulated 52,131 cases of the virus since testing began in March. There have been 722 deaths attributed in the county to the virus, which, according to Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Dr. Philip Huang, is now the third leading cause of death in the county behind diseases of the heart and cancers. Since March 20, the date of the first reported COVID-19 related death in Dallas County, the county has averaged 5.2 deaths per day.
Of cases requiring hospitalization, two-thirds of all COVID-19 patients have been under 65 years of age, and about half do not have high-risk chronic health conditions. Diabetes has been an underlying high-risk health condition reported in about a third of all hospitalized patients with COVID-19.
The county has been reporting for several weeks now that more than a third of the deaths related to COVID-19 have been among residents of long-term care facilities.
Editor’s note: This article initially reported the 31 deaths reported by DCHS was a single day record, which was incorrect. On July 29, the county health department reported 36 deaths. We regret the error.