The Dallas County Health Department is reporting four more confirmed COVID-19 deaths Wednesday along with 399 cases of the virus along with an increase in the rolling 7-day average.
The county is reporting five deaths, including four confirmed and one probable, including:
- A woman in her 40s who was a resident of the City of DeSoto. She had been critically ill in an area hospital and had underlying high-risk health conditions.
- A man in his 70s who was a resident of the City of Dallas. He had been critically ill in an area hospital and did not have underlying high-risk health conditions.
- A woman in her 70s who was a resident of the City of DeSoto. She had been critically ill in an area hospital and had underlying high-risk health conditions.
- A man in his 80s who was a resident of the City of Dallas. He had been critically ill in an area hospital and did not have underlying high-risk health conditions.
- A woman in her 80s who was a resident of the City of DeSoto. She had been critically ill in an area hospital and had underlying high-risk health conditions.
The 399 cases reported Wednesday included 44 from a state backlog, leaving 355 as new cases. The backlogged cases were from April (16), May (26) and June (2). The cases raised the county’s 7-day average from 1,502 cases per day to 1,525 cases per day; the 14-day average dropped from 995 cases per day to 988 cases per day. Late last week the averages were both around 500 cases per day, but the backlog of cases being released by the state has increased those averages.
“The overall trend is a gradual decline, and if we maintain our community resolve to wear masks, maintain six-foot distancing, use good hand hygiene, and forgo unnecessary trips and any activities around people who are not wearing a mask 100% of the time, we will continue to see the numbers improve, less people get sick, more businesses stay open, more activities become permissible and our kids getting back to school sooner rather than later,” said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.
Both Jenkins Gov. Greg Abbott said earlier this week that counties should expect to have several more days of “discovered, backlogged cases” before the reporting normalizes. Of the backlogged cases, Jenkins said the patients did receive the results of their COVID-19 test, but that information was lost in the state’s system and no tracing was done.
On Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott said the state and private labs have made changes to fix lags in reporting and that he has more confidence than ever that the accounting of the numbers being reported by the state are accurate.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott addressed the backlog of COVID-19 cases coming out of the Texas Department of State Health Services Tuesday saying the problems underlying the need for the adjustments have been solved and that he has more confidence in the accounting than ever before.
The county has now accumulated 66,464 cases of the virus since testing began in March. With an estimated 48,153 recoveries being reported by the state through Wednesday, there are also an estimated 17,467 active cases in Dallas County. There have been 843 confirmed 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 5.5 deaths per day.