Dallas County Adds 1,699 COVID-19 Cases Monday, 6 More Deaths

Dallas County added another 1,699 new cases of COVID-19 Monday along with six more deaths attributed to the virus.

Of the cases reported Monday, the county said 1,519 were confirmed cases and 180 were probable (antigen test) cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the county from March to 146,042 and the number of probable (antigen test) cases to 15,803. Over the last seven days, Dallas County officials have confirmed 12,010 confirmed and probable cases of the virus.

"It is an exciting day for America and for Dallas County as the first COVID vaccines are being given today, but remember, as these 1,699 cases and six deaths illustrate, COVID is still with us. Last week was our deadliest week and we are currently at our highest daily average of new COVID cases that we have seen thus far in the pandemic," said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins."

The six latest victims involved a woman in her 60s from Richardson, two women in their 60s from Dallas, a man in his 70s from Dallas, a man in his 80s from Cedar Hill and a man in his 90s from Garland. All six of the victims had been hospitalized and had underlying high-risk health conditions.

"It’s important that we use the two ‘vaccines’ that we currently have to keep ourselves protected. Our mask is a ‘vaccine’ we wear on our face. It protects us and those around us from the spread of COVID," Jenkins said in a statement. "The second ‘vaccine’ is our good judgement in following doctors’ advice in taking patriotic actions to plan ahead such as doing our shopping online or through curbside pickup and forgoing those crowds and get-togethers with people outside your home. It’s important that we do these things for now until such time as a vaccine can be taken by the broad population and we can end this threat to public health and our nation’s security."

County officials said Monday there have been 1,385 deaths in the county attributed to the virus. 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.

The county said that the provisional 7-day average for new confirmed and probable cases by date of a test collection for CDC week 49 was 1,560, which represents a rate of 56.6 daily new cases per 100,000 residents and is the highest case rate in the county since the pandemic began.

In the last 30 days, there have been 4,520 COVID-19 cases in school-aged children and staff reported from more than 735 separate K-12 schools in Dallas County, including 681 staff members.

There are currently 97 active long-term care facility outbreaks. Over the past 30 days, a total of 928 COVID-19 cases have been reported from these facilities, including 364 staff members. Of these cases 35 have been hospitalized, and 41 have died, including 2 deaths of staff members. Twenty-six outbreaks of COVID-19 in congregate-living facilities (e.g. homeless shelters, group homes, and halfway homes) have been reported in the past 30 days associated with 166 cases, including 8 hospitalizations. One facility has reported 89 COVID-19 outbreak cases since October.