The Dallas County Health Department is reporting three more confirmed COVID-19 deaths Thursday along with 102 new cases of the virus,
The county is reporting three deaths, all confirmed, including:
- A man in his 30s who was a resident of Dallas. He had been critically ill in an area hospital and did not have underlying high-risk health conditions.
- A woman in her 60s who was a resident of Mesquite. 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 Dallas. He had been critically ill in an area hospital and had underlying high-risk health conditions.
Dallas County Health and Human Services reported an additional 308 cases of the virus Thursday, but only 102 of them were new with the remaining 206 being cases from June that are part of the backlog reported by the Texas Department of State Health Services.
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The additional cases dropped the county's 7-day average from 1,525 cases per day to 1478 cases per day; the 14-day average went up, however, from 988 cases per day to 993 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.
Both Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins and Texas 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.
The county has now accumulated 66,772 cases of the virus since testing began in March. With an estimated 48,891 recoveries being reported by the state through Thursday, there are also an estimated 17,034 active cases in Dallas County. There have been 846 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.
