Dallas County Adds 3 New COVID-19 Deaths Friday, 258 Confirmed Cases – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

The Dallas County Health Department is reporting three new confirmed COVID-19 deaths Friday along with 258 new confirmed cases of the virus.

DCHHS reported 276 cases Friday, including 18 from June received from the Texas Department of State Health Services backlog.

The county reported three new deaths Friday, including:

• A woman in her 60s who was a resident of the City of Dallas. She had been critically ill in an area hospital and had underlying high-risk health conditions.
• A woman in her 70s who was a resident of the City of Irving. He had been hospitalized and had underlying high-risk health conditions.
• A man in his 70s who was a resident of the City of Irving. He had been critically ill in an area hospital and did not have underlying high-risk health conditions.

“Yesterday we went above 70,000 Dallas County residents who’ve contracted COVID-19 to date, but there are reasons for optimism as our hospitalizations and other metrics are trending downward,” said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who added that there was strong evidence that social distancing, masking and washing hands has helped curb the spread of the disease.

The additional cases decreased the county’s 7-day average from 476 cases per day to 414 cases per day; the 14-day average went down from 977 cases per day to 933 cases per day. Both averages continue to be impacted by the state backlog, particularly the 14-day average that is still impacted by the more than 7,000 cases added Aug. 16-17.

Both Jenkins and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said last 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.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) 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 70,376 cases of the virus since testing began in March. With an estimated 53,087 recoveries being reported by the state through Friday, there are also an estimated 16,118 active cases in Dallas County. There have been 895 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.