We’re keeping track of the most up-to-date news about the coronavirus in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. Check back for updates.

Blue Angels fly over Fort Worth to thank those fighting the coronavirus pandemic

The Navy’s Blue Angels said thank you Wednesday morning.

As they flew in formation over cities stretching from McKinney to Fort Worth, they showed support for health care and other essential workers who are helping fight the coronavirus pandemic.

“We salute and thank all healthcare workers, first responders, and other essential personnel serving on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19,” the Blue Angels tweeted, adding the #AmericaStrong hashtag.

It took the aircraft — a formation of six F/A-18C/D Hornet aircraft — about 30 minutes to fly over North Texas medical centers, beginning at 11 a.m. in McKinney before crossing over a number of North Texas cities and circling over downtown Dallas and Fort Worth.

After the flyovers in North Texas, the aircraft headed to Houston and New Orleans for similar tributes.

Tarrant County reports 5 more coronavirus deaths as new cases spike again

Tarrant County reported five more coronavirus deaths and 127 new cases on Wednesday.

The 127 new cases comes after four consecutive days of fewer than 100 new daily cases. The county has confirmed 2,813 COVID-19 patients, including 654 recoveries and 88 deaths over the course of the pandemic.

The latest pandemic deaths include three Fort Worth residents — a man in his 50s, a woman in her 70s and a man in his 80s. Also deceased are a Keller woman in her 90s and a Benbrook man in his 60s. All had underlying health conditions, according to county health officials.

Of the 88 confirmed pandemic-related deaths, 54 lived in Fort Worth, six lived in Arlington, four each lived in Grapevine, Keller and Benbrook, two each lived in Forest Hill, Haltom City, Azle, Mansfield and rural Tarrant County, and one each lived in Grand Prairie, Hurst, Southlake, Sansom Park, River Oaks, and Lakeside.

Tarrant County Public Health Director Vinny Taneja urged residents to continue to follow social distancing guidelines.

Dallas County adds more than 200 coronavirus cases, closes in on 5,000 total patients

Dallas County is closing in on 5,000 total confirmed coronavirus cases after reporting 243 new cases and two deaths on Wednesday.

The county has confirmed 4,869 COVID-19 patients and 123 deaths and has reported more than 200 new patients each of the past four days, by far the most in a four-day stretch of the pandemic.

The latest deaths include two residents of long-term care facilities in their 80s — a woman in Garland and a man in Dallas.

Wednesday’s 243 cases are second only to Tuesday’s single-day high 253 cases.

Free coronavirus testing sites opening in Fort Worth, Dallas in ‘underserved’ communities

Free drive-thru coronavirus testing sites in Fort Worth and Dallas are opening in a partnership with Kroger and both cities.

The Fort Worth site opens Thursday at J.P. Elder Middle School, at 600 Park St. The site will run from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

The Dallas site will open Saturday in the CitySquare parking lot at 1610 Malcolm X Blvd. It will be open from 8:30 to 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Monday, and from 1 to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

Kroger Health, which is the healthcare division of The Kroger Co., plans to perform over 1,000 tests weekly at each site.

“As we begin to take the first steps in easing restrictions and slowly re-opening, we must continue to increase our testing capacity so we can truly understand the impact this virus is having on our community,” Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price said in a news release. “I am grateful for our continued partnership with Kroger … We must continue to protect ourselves against this virus, and testing is vital role in ultimately combating COVID-19.”

Residents must register online and go through a virtual screening tool to see if they meet the requirements for a test. If so, they’ll select a location and appointment time online at https://www.krogerhealth.com/covidtesting.

Texas state leaders defend Dallas salon owner jailed for violating coronavirus order

Texas’ top leaders urged a state district judge to reconsider the week-long jail sentence of a Dallas salon owner who reopened her business in the face of coronavirus-related restrictions on nonessential businesses.

In a Wednesday letter to state District Judge Eric Moyé, Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote that Shelley Luther, the owner of Salon à la Mode in Dallas, should be immediately released.

“The trial judge did not need to lock up Shelley Luther. His order is a shameful abuse of judicial discretion, which seems like another political stunt in Dallas,” Paxton said in a statement.

It was a point Gov. Greg Abbott echoed in a statement of his own shortly after, calling Moyé’s ruling “excessive.”

“As I have made clear through prior pronouncements, jailing Texans for non-compliance with executive orders should always be the last available option,” Abbott said in a statement Wednesday. “Compliance with executive orders during this pandemic is important to ensure public safety; however, surely there are less restrictive means to achieving that goal than jailing a Texas mother.”

Moyé’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Luther was sentenced Tuesday after she refused the judge’s offer to commit to not reopening until allowed to and to apologize for doing so. In addition to spending a week in jail for being found in contempt of court, Luther was also fined $7,000 for violating a temporary restraining order against reopening her business.

They were once trash, now treasured. Fort Worth regional hub for mask decontamination

Inside the Will Rogers Convention Center about five minutes from downtown Fort Worth, a group of train containers have been transformed into decontamination stations for N95 surgical masks.

When the decontamination stations reach full capacity, workers will be able to recycle up to 80,000 N95 masks daily. Frontline healthcare workers used to throw away these masks after a single use.

With this decontamination strategy, a mask that was used once can be used up to 20 times.

Recycling efforts will not end the N95 mask shortage issues during the coronavirus pandemic, but the decontamination process will do a lot to stretch the available supply, officials said during a press conference this week. Masks can be returned within two to three days, authorities say.

The decontamination service is being offered to Texas frontline healthcare workers at no charge and is a joint effort between several private organizations and government agencies, according to Fort Worth Fire Department officials.

“We just need folks to take advantage of it,” Fort Worth Fire Chief Jim Davis said. “This is a community issue that will take a community solution to solve.”

The city of Fort Worth has partnered with Battelle Memorial Institute and will serve as a regional hub in Texas to assist first responders and healthcare facilities and systems throughout the state in prolonging their current supplies, according to a Fort Worth Fire Department news release.

Texas Education Agency updates graduation ceremony guidance for Texas high schools

The Texas Education Agency on Tuesday updated its comprehensive graduation guidelines for Texas high schools, stating that in-person ceremonies can take place as early as May 15.

With school districts across the state closed for the remainder of the academic year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, local administrators have began looking for alternate ways to provide formal sendoffs for the Class of 2020. The guidelines, which were originally posted April 21, offer parameters for school districts to plan and hold graduations while minimizing the spread of COVID-19.

As part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Strike Force to Open Texas, TEA is outlining four different pathways for schools to celebrate their graduating seniors:

• Completely virtual ceremonies that take place entirely online, with the use of video-conference or other technologies.
• Hybrid ceremonies, which consist of a compilation of videos of students being recognized in person as they celebrate graduation in small groups.
• Vehicle ceremonies, in which students and their families wait in their cars while other graduates are recognized one at time with their families alongside them.
• Outdoor in-person ceremonies, which are currently permitted for counties as follows:
  • Between May 15 and May 31, an outdoor ceremony may take place in a rural county that has an attestation as described in the “Texans Helping Texans: The Governor’s Report to Open Texas” (April 27) that remains in effect seven days prior to the ceremony.
  • An outdoor ceremony may take place in any Texas county on or after June 1.

Activists worry Fort Worth’s plan for renters will lead to mass evictions

The month of April was quiet in Tarrant County’s Justice of the Peace courts. State and county moratoriums barred courts from holding eviction hearings, and landlords, who could still file paperwork to begin the eviction process, held off. The number of filings tumbled from a typical month’s count in the high hundreds to about 75 in April, according to Stuart Campbell, an attorney with Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas.

Judge Sergio De Leon, who oversees a Justice of the Peace court in Fort Worth, saw the decrease in filings as a sign that landlords and tenants were solving problems together. “That there’s some communication,” he said, “and that both sides are doing what they can to resolve the matter peacefully without any court order.”

Fort Worth, to a greater degree than similar big cities in Texas, is banking on a spirit of cooperation between tenants and landlords to continue as the moratoriums likely end later this month — a decision that housing advocates fear could lead to increased homelessness.

For cities to be in the best position to avoid a rash of evictions, they need to offer renters both assistance to cover rent and a grace period to keep them in their homes while waiting on funds, said Christina Rosales, deputy director of the Texas Housers advocacy group. Although Fort Worth has set aside $15 million to help residents who are short on rental and mortgage payments, it has not followed the likes of Dallas, Austin and San Marcos and instituted grace periods that give renters between 60 to 90 days to come up with rent after a notice to vacate is given. Without the grace period, Rosales fears it will be harder for Fort Worth to avoid “a mass eviction epidemic.”

Fort Worth already has the highest eviction rate of any big city in Texas. Nearly 1 in 20 renters is subject to eviction in a given year, according to data from Eviction Lab. Its eviction rate is about two times higher than Houston’s, three times higher than Dallas’ and four times higher than Austin’s.

Another Fort Worth suburb puts the brakes on fireworks, music, summer activities

Bedford is putting the brakes on summer activities and postponing the popular Blues & BBQ festival until next year as concerns grow about the city’s finances and people’s safety during the COVID-19 crisis.

During a special meeting Tuesday, the city council decided to shut down the Bedford Splash Aquatics Center, cancel summer camp and 4thFest and postpone the Bedford Blues and BBQ Festival until 2021.

“The city is looking at some bleak financial times right now,” councilwoman Ruth Culver said, referring to the decision to cancel the July 4th activities.

“The 4th is probably the toughest one to give up because of the patriotism. It doesn’t send the right message if we are furloughing people and then we go and shoot off fireworks,” Culver said.

Bedford and other Tarrant cities are seeing plummeting sales tax revenue and fewer dollars spent on tourism. Employees are furloughed and buildings are closed as a precaution to keep people safe during the pandemic.

Arlington hands out 250,000 masks to business employees to ‘help our community rebound’

The new Globe Life Field in Arlington is not yet open to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic, but one of the parking lots was seeing plenty of action Wednesday.

The action came in the form of people driving through to receive free protective masks for employees at Arlington businesses and restaurants.

In all, 250,000 masks provided by Tarrant County were available for distribution on a first-come, first-served basis to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and protect the most vulnerable in the community. Each employee at a business was provided two masks.

“We’re supplying masks for patients and staff and we were running low. We’ve had to wear some masks, if they weren’t too soiled, for a week,” said Kimberley White, admissions coordinator for American Renal Associates. “The City of Arlington is amazing. I’ve lived here 32 years, and they’re always stepping up for the community.”

Kishani Mathiasz, regional director for K.I.D.S. Humpty Dumpty Academy, said finding masks for herself and her staff in the child care industry has been a challenge.

“I have about 20 staff members, and we have about 75 to 80 kids. It’s been hard to find masks, and this helps so much,” she said. “And we have to be open because we’re helping the essential workers.”

The City of Arlington partnered with Tarrant County, the Texas Rangers, Greater Arlington Chamber of Commerce, Arlington Convention and Visitors Bureau and Downtown Arlington Management Corporation for Wednesday’s giveaway in conjunction with phase one of Texas’ reopening.