Tarrant County passed a grim milestone on Monday, counting more than 1,000 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 on the fourth day in a row the number of COVID deaths totaled more than 20.
Tarrant County passed the milestone on the same day that the first doses of a COVID-19 vaccine began arriving arriving throughout the U.S. on Monday including in Texas, with health care workers first in line to receive the shots.
Tarrant County Public Health on Monday, Dec. 14 reported 22 COVID-19 deaths. The deceased included a woman from Keller in her 90s, a woman from Fort Worth in her 90s, a man and woman from Sansom Park in their 80s, a woman from Arlington in her 80s, a woman from North Richland Hills in her 80s, a woman from Saginaw in her 80s, two women from Fort Worth in their 80s, two men from Euless in their 70s, two men from Fort Worth in their 70s, two men from unincorporated Tarrant County in their 70s, five men from Fort Worth in their 60s, a man from Mansfield in his 60s, and a man from Hurst in his 50s. All but five had underlying health conditions.
Tarrant County now has 1,014 confirmed deaths from the COVID-19 virus and 87,921 people have recovered.
Texas has seen 24,400 virus-related deaths since the pandemic began, which is second only to New York in overall death count, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins. One in every 332 people in Texas tested positive for the virus in the past week.
On Monday, Texas health officials reported 8,771 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 26 more deaths. The Department of State Health Services also reported 804 probable cases and 9,304 people hospitalized with the virus.
Associated Press contributed to this report