Coronavirus live updates Aug. 21: 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.
Texas’ public schools will report COVID cases to state. Data will be posted in Sept.
Texas’ public school districts will soon be reporting data on confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus to the state, the Texas Education Agency and Texas Department of State Health Services announced Thursday.
Districts will report COVID-19 cases to DSHS, which will display the cases totals publicly in a new tracking system starting in September, according to a joint statement from the two agencies.
“Data on the number of cases in schools is of paramount interest to parents, students, teachers, staff, public health experts, policymakers, and the larger community,” the statement read. “This information will be submitted to DSHS any time there is a positive case in a campus community.”
TEA is still working to gather input from school officials, and will finalize the reporting process in the coming days, according to the statement.
TEA Commissioner Mike Morath told superintendents of the requirement Thursday afternoon, according to the Austin American-Statesman. Earlier this month, both agencies had told the Dallas Morning News that discussions were still taking place over whether to collect data on COVID-19 cases reported in schools.
“We are studying the new guidance and will do whatever is required and we will continue our protocol of working with Tarrant County Public Health,” Clint Bond, a spokesman for the Fort Worth district, wrote in an email Thursday.
As Dallas-Fort Worth movie theaters reopen, masks required except for popcorn munching
Someone who decides to give the next movie they see two thumbs up will want to sanitize them.
After five months, watching a film indoors on a large screen at the same time as strangers is again a possibility.
Popcorn kernels are snapping anew, and screens that had been dark across the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area are coming to life.
Movie theaters in the region are, with others in the United States, beginning to reopen. National chain theater companies are again showing films after a coronavirus outbreak in March made movies an entertainment element that fell in with a long list of parts of life that became unsafe.
Many theaters that did not plan to open on Thursday or Friday will begin to sell tickets next week. Others will dust off projectors in early September.
The experience will be radically different.
Floors that had long been sticky as the result of spilled soda are likely to not remain that way for long as cleaning becomes vigorous.
As TCU students return amid COVID, parties spark worry the virus will close campus
As TCU students returned to class this week, it quickly became clear some were not interested in following mask mandates and social distancing guidelines designed to prevent an outbreak of the coronavirus, with students calling out their peers on social media.
That’s a concern as three major universities — the University of North Carolina, Notre Dame and Michigan State — chose to go back to online-only learning after coronavirus outbreaks on campus. Young people are becoming the primary drivers of novel coronavirus outbreaks, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
University officials say the school is hopeful students will take responsibility for themselves so campus can remain open.
“We have received some reports of large off-campus gatherings, which is disappointing for our community to hear,” spokeswoman Ann Davis wrote in an email. “Students are reminded regularly that large gatherings are not permitted and that we all must do our part to stop the spread of coronavirus.”
Several factors could send students and faculty home, including the number of active cases on campus, capacity of the school’s isolation space and Fort Worth area hospital and ventilator capacity.
As of the afternoon of Aug. 20, the unviveristy reported 55 active coronavirus cases, according to an online reporting dashboard updated daily.
Editorial: Six months in, Texas’ failure to correctly count coronavirus cases is pathetic
There’s an old saying in business: You measure what you value.
But when the measurements are sloppy and ill-timed, they don’t have much value at all.
So it is, apparently, with Texas’ COVID-19 case numbers.
State health officials realized recently that they have hundreds of thousands of backlogged cases because of a confluence of errors and ill-preparedness. So, counties are learning of virus cases from June and July, scrambling our understanding of where various areas are in the pandemic and far too late to do any effective contact tracing. In Tarrant County alone, it’s thousands of undercounted cases.
Nearly six months into the pandemic, and Texas health officials still don’t have a firm grasp on the basic math of COVID-19. How pathetic.
Gov. Greg Abbott, visiting Fort Worth to unveil a police-funding initiative, said the backlog was an “ongoing legacy-based issue” exacerbated by private labs slowly processing tests. All will be well in a manner of days, he assured.
To translate, the Department of State Health Services was not built to receive, verify and track a pandemic. As it tried to ramp up, Quest Diagnostic officials contend, apparently the state installed a new server and didn’t tell private labs, causing hundreds of thousands of cases to fall into a digital void.
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.
Tarrant County COVID hospitalization rate keeps dropping; new cases lowest in 9 days
Tarrant County reported 231 new coronavirus cases and no deaths on Thursday.
It’s the fewest cases reported since Aug. 11 and the third time since Aug. 10 no COVID-19 deaths were reported.
The county has reported a total of 39,053 coronavirus cases, including 478 deaths and an estimated 32,129 recoveries.
The case total includes 1,843 probable cases, according to the county’s website.
The hospitalization rate in Tarrant County has dropped to its lowest since June 25. Confirmed COVID patients are using 7% of all hospital beds in the county and 9% of all occupied hospital beds in the county. Those rates were 6% and 8% on June 25. Since hitting a pandemic high on July 23 of 15% and 20%, the hospitalization rate has consistently dropped.
Dallas man in his 30s with no underlying health conditions among latest COVID deaths
Dallas County reported 308 new coronavirus cases and three deaths on Thursday.
The latest deaths include a Dallas man in his 30s who did not have underlying health conditions. The others were a Mesquite woman in her 60s and a Dallas man in his 70s.
Dallas County has confirmed a total of 66,772 COVID-19 cases, including 846 deaths. The county does not report recoveries.
Officials also reported 41 more probable cases for a total of 2,571 probable cases and eight probable COVID-related deaths.
Of the total 308 coronavirus cases reported Thursday, 206 are previously unreported cases from a backlog in the state’s data system, including 172 from June, 32 from July and two from early August.
Tarrant County hospital capacity
Hospital capacity by available beds and ventilators for Tarrant County. Data provided by Tarrant County Public Health.
Fort Worth state rep’s company tried to evict tenant. It may have violated federal law.
In a potential violation of federal law, a property company owned by Fort Worth state Rep. Craig Goldman filed an eviction against an Arlington tenant living at an apartment that appears to have been protected under the CARES Act.
The eviction for nonpayment of rent was filed in April by The Arlington Village Apartments LLC and brought to a court hearing in late June. From March 27 through July 24, eviction filings and fees for nonpayment of rent were banned by the CARES Act on properties backed by federal mortgages, such as from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to Tarrant County records, Arlington Village Apartments LLC’s deed of trust was secured by Fannie Mae. The apartment’s address and property name also show up as being backed by Fannie Mae on a CARES Act database created by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Goldman, a Republican who has served in the Legislature since 2013, signed the deed. Texas Secretary of State records from 2019 indicate that he and his wife, Auryn Goldman, are directors of The Arlington Village Apartments LLC. And in a 2020 Personal Financial Statement with the Texas Ethics Commission he noted that The Arlington Village Apartments LLC was held by him and Auryn. Auryn Goldman also holds apartment complexes through SC Apartments LLC and Martha’s Villa LLC, according to the Personal Financial Statement.
The tenant, who hired an attorney and successfully challenged the eviction, filed a lawsuit against Goldman’s company and faced a second eviction filing, in July, for alleged lease violations. “We think it was done in retaliation and on purpose to avoid any prohibitions from the CARES Act moratorium,” said Stuart Campbell, an attorney with Legal Aid Northwest Texas who represents the tenant.
Goldman’s specific oversight regarding Arlington Village is unclear, but he appeared at a Tarrant County District Court hearing regarding the lawsuit against Arlington Village in late July. He declined to respond to the Star-Telegram’s questions about his role with the complex and whether he believed it was federally backed and protected by the CARES Act.
Over 50 children and 130 employees have had COVID at Tarrant County child care centers
At least 59 children and 138 employees have been infected with the novel coronavirus at child care centers in Tarrant County since March, according to data posted Thursday by Texas Health and Human Services.
For the first time, the agency posted a spreadsheet detailing the names and locations of licensed child care centers and similar programs that supervise kids, like summer camps or after-school programs, that have reported COVID-19 cases. Across the state, there have been at least 1,120 COVID-19 cases among children and 2,200 among employees at those facilities since March.
As of Wednesday, 13 active infections were reported among children and eight among employees statewide. In Tarrant County, The Children’s Courtyard of South Fort Worth at 8701 S. Hulen St. had one COVID-19 case in an enrolled child and the Spanish Schoolhouse at 480 Johnson Road in Keller had one in an employee, according to state data.
Data will be updated on HHSC’s website weekdays by 3 p.m. All data from the facilities is self-reported, provisional and subject to change, according to the agency. If a facility fails to report a positive diagnosis, it will be investigated and “deficiencies cited accordingly.”
HHSC did not release specific locations of home child care programs that had COVID-19 cases “due to confidentiality issues,” but did release statewide totals.
Dallas County health committee recommends virtual learning until COVID spread weakens
A Dallas County committee recommended Thursday that schools be limited to virtual learning when the school year begins over the next couple of weeks.
Dallas ISD agreed to adhere to the recommendation and will require virtual learning when the semester begins Sept. 8 until at least Oct. 6. The committee notes that 63 of the country’s 101 largest school districts have decided to start the semester with virtual learning.
The School Public Health and Education Committee is made up of experts in pediatric medicine. The committee looked “exhaustively at the issue of protecting children in schools,” according to a county release.
The committee plans to release more information soon, but wanted to share its guidance with school superintendents sooner rather than later.
“I commend them for their work, and as I’ve said before, I recognize that I am not a doctor and will rely on the advice of medical specialists who have trained their entire adult lives to advise us in this moment,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said.
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.
Kennedale considers furloughs, tax increase, closing library to balance budget
The Kennedale City Council is considering furloughs, raising property taxes, outsourcing ambulance service and closing the library to balance the 2021 budget.
During a work session Tuesday, the council wrestled with how to balance the proposed $7.2 million operating budget, which includes a proposed property tax increase of 4 cents, to 77 cents per $100 of assessed value. The increase would cost the owner of a $250,000 an extra $100.
The proposal also calls for the city to take $452,000 from its reserves, bringing the fund below the recommended 15 to 20% amount, city manager George Campbell said.
Campbell said he is concerned because Kennedale won’t have enough reserves on hand for emergencies if the funds are withdrawn.
Two years ago, the council lowered the property tax rate and adopted a budget that included pay increases, which meant drawing from the reserve fund balance, Campbell said. The city brought employees’ salaries up to 80% of the market rate which “exacerbated the problem,” he said.
‘We feel confident that we’re good to go.’ TCU AD talks football’s return amid COVID
The Big 12 is going forward with football this fall. At least for now.
The conference’s board of directors decided to proceed cautiously toward a fall season last week, something that has excited fans within the league. Teams continue to go through fall camp for a season that starts in less than a month.
TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati has run the gamut of emotions the last few weeks, from dreading football being canceled to an eagerness of figuring out how to play this fall. As of this week, he sees the season getting underway with TCU hosting SMU on Sept. 12 at Amon G. Carter Stadium.
“We feel really confident that we’re good to go for the first game against SMU,” Donati said. “I’d tell you that the things that keep us up at night is there’s a lot of people back on campus now and there’s obviously a lot more opportunity for community spread. So we’ve got to continue to make sure that we’re staying safe as a campus.
“We’re just starting to see those things are happening in other places across the country, so it gives you some pause for concern. But our protocols are working well. The team wants to play and seems very focused on making sure they all keep each other healthy and safe.”