Tarrant County sees COVID-19 hospitalizations increase

This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19—isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (pink) cultured in the lab. Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases-Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIH

Tarrant County Public Health (TCPH) today reported one COVID-19 death. The deceased is a woman in her 70s from Fort Worth with underlying health conditions.

Tarrant County now has 211 confirmed deaths from the COVID-19 virus. 4,513 people have recovered. The county reported 260 new cases on Tuesday.

During the Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting, TCPH Director Vinny Taneja said the hospitalization trend for COVID-19 has been up for the last three weeks in Tarrant County.

“The first low (for hospitalizations) was mid-April, around April 13th,” he said. “We had a low of 113 confirmed cases in the hospital in Tarrant County. And then the second low was sort of end of May. We hit about 180, something in there in the hospital.

“And now we’re jumping back up into the 200s. And in fact, this morning we’ll report 320 COVID confirmed cases in the hospital. So that’s a significant jump in number of cases. We have had almost a 40% increase in cases over the last couple of weeks. Total occupied beds with the COVID-19 patients are, again, starting to trend up. We’re at a high again. About 8% of occupied beds are occupied with COVID-19 patients,” he said.

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Taneja noted that the increase in cases is coming from younger people as businesses reopen.

“We’re seeing a huge surge in the 25 to 64 age group,” he said. “It makes common sense because most of them are out mobile in the community. The young people like me tend to forget, well we think we’re invincible. So, they don’t wear a mask or they forget to social distance. So we’re seeing that huge surge, and that gets into his point about the disease being a little milder because younger people are generally healthier, so less likely to get a severe form of the illness.”

Taneja said he has found some good news during this current surge. “COVID-19 deaths luckily are trending down,” he said. “So that’s the only good news I could find in all of this, unfortunately. And we’ll take it. We’ll take any good news we can get.”

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