Dallas County added another 1,675 new cases of COVID-19 Saturday along with two more deaths attributed to the virus.
Of the cases reported Saturday, the county said 1,411 were confirmed cases and 264 were probable (antigen test) cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the county from March to 132,890 and the number of probable (antigen test) cases to 13,430. Over the last seven days, Dallas County officials have confirmed 11,527 confirmed and probable cases of the virus.
The two latest victims were both Dallas men in their 70s. According to Dallas County Health and Human Services, they had both been critically ill at area hospitals and had underlying health conditions.
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County officials said Saturday there have been 1,232 confirmed deaths in the county attributed to the virus and another 38 probable deaths. In the summer, Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Dr. Philip Huang said COVID-19 is the third leading cause of death in the county behind diseases of the heart and cancers.
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The county said that the provisional 7-day average for new confirmed and probable cases by date of a test collection for CDC week 48 was 1,069, a drop from week 47 and is a rate of 40.6 daily new cases per 100,000 residents. During the same week, a provisional total of 770 confirmed and probable cases were diagnosed in school children between the ages of 5 and 17 -- another drop from the week before.
Since Nov. 1 there have been 5,320 COVID-19 cases in school-aged children and staff reported from more than 770 separate K-12 schools in Dallas County, including 849 staff members.
In the last week, 13 K-12 schools in Dallas County temporarily halted in-person instruction due to COVID-19.
"By next week we’ll have a feel for what the after-effects of Thanksgiving will be, and with the colder weather, we know that COVID cases are likely to uptick as more and more people are forced into tight spaces indoors," Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said in a statement. "So it’s a time to be thankful for all the things that we have and not focus on the things that we would like to do that the disease is keeping us from doing. We also should not focus on our neighbors for their perceived failures but rather look at ourselves and those in our family and work teams and ask ourselves how we can get incrementally better and a little safer."
