Coronavirus live updates Aug. 17: Here’s what to know in the Dallas-Fort Worth area
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.
Backlog again adds to Tarrant County’s COVID cases, with eight deaths reported Sunday
Tarrant County reported 688 new COVID-19 cases and eight deaths on Sunday. Most of the cases the county reported had previously gone unreported due to a system error from the Texas Department of State Health Services, according to county officials.
The county also reported eight new deaths. This puts the county’s total number of cases at 37,760 with 459 deaths, according to county data. There have been an estimated 28,120 recoveries.
The recent spike in cases the past two days is due to an electronic lab report backlog from to the DSHS, according to county officials. Officials said 340 of the cases reported Sunday are new while the rest date back 30 or more days.
In neighboring Dallas County, the same has occurred. The county reported 5,361 additional cases of coronavirus on Sunday, but most cases date about 30 days ago.
The backlogs were due to coding errors that the DSHS is now starting to fix through a system upgrade.
The Tarrant County deaths reported Sunday include three women from Fort Worth, two in their 90s and one in her 80s; four men from Fort Worth, one in his 90s, two in their 80s and one in his 70s; and a man from North Richland Hills in his 60s. All had underlying health conditions.
Dallas County adds 5,195 previously unreported COVID-19 cases due to Texas backlog
Dallas County reported 5,361 additional cases of coronavirus on Sunday, most of which previously went unreported due to a coding error from the Texas Department of State Health Services, according to the Dallas County Health Department.
Out of the new cases, 5,195 came from a backlog in cases at DSHS labs. The backlog was due to coding errors that the DSHS is now starting to fix through a system upgrade. Most of the positive COVID-19 cases reported from the lab are from tests administered in July, the Dallas health department said.
The Dallas health department broke down the backlog of cases by months in which the positive tests were administered. Thirteen of the tests were from March, 149 were from April, 80 were from May, 52 were from June, 4,298 were from July, and 603 were from August.
The county also reported one COVID-19 related death on Sunday of a man in his 50s who lived in Dallas. He had been critically ill in a hospital and had underlying health conditions. With the additional cases, the county now has 63,428 confirmed coronavirus cases and 825 deaths.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said the county expects to receive even more batches of previously missed cases from the DSHS system.
Other counties received similarly large numbers of missed COVID-19 cases after DSHS announced Thursday that 124,693 tests statewide went previously unreported due to the coding error. On Saturday, Tarrant County Public Health reported more than 1,400 cases.
The backlog in cases emphasizes the need for people to stay home, wear masks and social distance, especially while awaiting COVID-19 test results, Jenkins said in a statement.
The Dallas County health department did not conduct contact tracing on any of the unreported cases because they were not made aware of them. Jenkins said this shows the importance of informing anyone you’ve been in close contact with if you test positive for COVID-19.
He also emphasized the need for everyone to properly wear masks while in public.
“If you choose not to wear a mask in a public setting or to wear your mask with your nose exposed, you are essentially saying thank you for protecting me, but my convenience and comfort are more important than me protecting you,” he said in a statement.
A ‘phenomenal teacher,’ longtime TCU professor dies at 65 from COVID-19 complications
Robert Rhodes, a professor for more than 30 years at TCU, died Friday from COVID-19 complications, university officials said. He was 65.
Rhodes, who was known as a “professor’s professor,” taught law in the Neeley School of Business, first starting as an adjunct professor in 1982. He practiced law until 1984, before becoming a full-time lecturer at TCU and became a well-respected and successful professor.
“This loss is devastating for me to relay and to bear, as I know it is for so many of our students, faculty and staff who admired Rob so much,” said Daniel Pullin, the John V. Roach Dean of the Neeley School of Business, in a TCU memorial. “Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and loved ones.”
Originally from Kentucky, Rhodes received his Master of Law in international trade and finance from Tulane University in New Orleans, where he graduated among the top three students and his Doctorate of Jurisprudence from Baylor University in 1980.
Rhodes was known for his quiet demeanor in class before letting out a booming voice to start his lectures, said Bill Moncrief, senior associate dean of the Neeley School of Business. For the rest of the class, students were mesmerized by the way he taught.
“Rob was just a phenomenal teacher,” Moncrief said.
Editorial: A COVID-19 treatment shows promise — and you might be able to help fellow Texans
We all eagerly await the day an effective coronavirus vaccine is created and made widely available. It’s the one thing that will free us from the fear and uncertainty over how the pandemic will play out.
In the meantime, though, advances in treatment of the virus are worth watching, too. The disease is still dreadfully serious. But doctors are learning more about how to treat patients with COVID-19 and prevent deaths. We’ve stepped away from the nightmare scenario medical and political leaders feared in the spring, when we were nervously counting available ventilators.
And one promising treatment, blood plasma, involves recovered COVID-19 patients helping others. The treatment is still unproven by rigorous scientific studies, but enough doctors are seeing success that public health experts are hopeful it will make a difference.
“Doctors have been using it and it seems to work, and it makes sense to us that it works,” said Dr. Laurie Sutor, vice president of medical and technical services for Carter BloodCare.
It involves taking plasma, the liquid part of blood, from someone who has recovered from COVID-19 and transfusing it into another patient. If enough antibodies against the virus are present, they can fight it while the patient’s own immune system catches up.
The blood bank is urging people who have defeated the virus to donate plasma. There are important criteria to meet: Donors must have had a positive test, shown symptoms of infection and be at least 14 days clear of those symptoms. And they must meet standard requirements for donating blood.
Potential donors should first register on Carter’s website. Ideally, donors should give blood within a month or two of their infection, so antibodies are still highly present. But the process is the same as any other blood donation.
Estimated active cases over time
Coronavirus daily active case estimates by local counties in the Dallas - Fort Worth metroplex, beginning April 8, 2020. Data provided by Texas Health and Human Services.
Baby born at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital believed to be first to contract COVID in womb
Doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas reported the first baby in the U.S. known to have contracted the coronavirus while in the womb.
Baby Alexa Figueroa tested positive for COVID-19 less than 24 hours after being prematurely delivered from mother Wendy Figueroa six weeks early on May 2, according to Star-Telegram media partner WFAA-TV.
Doctors delivered the baby prematurely after Wendy Figueroa tested positive when she was 34 weeks pregnant.
“We immediately separated baby from mother. Mom was wearing a mask during delivery to reduce transmission,” said Dr. Mamarambath Jaleel, who runs the Parkland Neonatal ICU, told WFAA.
After baby Alexa tested positive, doctors tested the placenta, which also came back positive.
“Having the testing positive of the placenta, the most likely explanation was the transmission of infection was when the baby was in the mother’s womb,” Dr. Jaleel said.
A day or two later, Alexa developed a fever and required supplemental oxygen, Jaleel told WFAA. According to Jaleel, 128 pregnant women at Parkland have tested positive for COVID-19. Six of the babies later tested positive, but only Alexa got sick, Jaleel said.
Group protests against Fort Worth school district’s COVID-19 online learning plan
A group of families demonstrated at the Fort Worth Independent School District administration building Monday morning — what would have been the first day of school — to protest the district’s online learning plan amid the coronavirus pandemic.
FWISD plans to start school on Sept. 8, and all classes will be held virtually for the first four weeks. Katie Stadler, a mom with four children at FWISD and the demonstration organizer, said hundreds of families oppose the district’s decision, and the district has not done a good enough job preparing for the school year.
Stadler is part of the DFW Facebook group “Back in School - Back to Safety.” The group, which focuses on getting children back in school, has about 1,700 members.
She hoped anywhere from 300 to 500 families would attend Monday’s demonstration, and she has been passing out fliers in FWISD neighborhoods. She’s specifically sought out Hispanic and other minority communities because she feels the district has not done a good job including them in the conversation. While visiting with families in those neighborhoods, she said, she talked to one woman who had no idea about the delayed start of school, or virtual learning — she thought her kids would be returning to school as normal on Monday.
Stadler blames the FWISD board for the lack of information to community members, especially those who do not speak English or do not have access to the internet. The board has been conducting online surveys to determine how parents feel about their kids returning to school, which misses an entire section of the community, she said.
“A lot of families are at risk that we can’t even reach. We don’t know if kids are being cared for or fed,” she said.
The district said to ensure families without internet can learn virtually, it has handed out 10,000 laptops and 11,000 hot spots to students, and has 20,000 Chromebooks and 10,000 hot spots set aside for further distribution.
Some Kennedale students want to require masks everywhere on campus. District officials say that’s not possible
Kennedale schools will require students to wear masks while on campus except when social distancing is possible, a measure some students are saying is not enough.
Maddison Fail and Allie Murphy, seniors at Kennedale High School, say students should be required to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in classrooms even when social distancing.
Students will be required to wear masks at all times when social distancing is not possible, according to a statement from the district.
Fail and Murphy started a petition, along with some other student leaders on campuses in the district, in hopes of showing the district support for requiring masks at all times on campus.
The petition had 274 signatures as of Sunday afternoon.
Fail said they are looking for more parents to sign the petition with the belief the school board will pay more attention to the issue that way.
Fail said they are doing the petition for the safety of students, employees and elderly family members who may get the virus from those students or employees.
Kennedale school district spokeswoman Mandy Rabalais said the district’s lawyer told them the district can’t legally do that, pointing to orders from Gov. Greg Abbott regarding social distancing and face masks.
The masks cannot be required when social distancing is possible and being exercised, Rabalais said.
“We read the governor’s order to say that masks are required unless you can social distance and we cannot require masks for students 10 and under,” Rabalais said.
COVID study cautious about fall projections in DFW despite decreased hospitalizations
UT Southwestern Medical Center projects coronavirus hospitalizations will continue to decline over the next two weeks in both Dallas and Tarrant Counties.
In a study released this week, UTSMC researchers predict COVID-19 hospitalizations will continue to decrease and eventually flatten to about 280 to 510 concurrent cases in Tarrant County by Aug. 25.
UTSMC has released multiple studies during the pandemic, offering analysis and projections for the North Texas region. The researchers in May correctly predicted the rise in cases and deaths if safety measures weren’t in place and again in June predicted the massive surge that struck DFW in mid-July.
The latest study predicts COVID-19 ICU patients in Tarrant County will continue to decline the rest of August and projects about 470 new coronavirus cases a day by Aug. 25.
“In both Dallas and Tarrant Counties, hospitalizations remain high but are currently declining and are projected to continue this gradual decline over the next two weeks,” the study said. “The percent of COVID-19 tests coming back positive continues to drop but is still high enough to suggest that more infection is present in the community than can been seen through testing data alone.”
The study reports that COVID hospitalizations have declined 20% compared to the first week in August and 33% compared to the last week in July.
Researchers suggest that doctor visits for COVID-like symptoms, which they report have increased significantly, could “precede another rise in cases and hospitalizations.”
COVID-19 Hospitalizations over Time
Coronavirus daily hospitalization counts in Texas and the larger Trauma Service Areas, beginning April 8, 2020. Data provided by Texas Health and Human Services.