Coronavirus live updates Sept. 1: 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.
Fort Worth’s school district wanted to make online classes better. Here’s what it did.
Things quickly turned chaotic for Nancy Estrada and her sons when Fort Worth ISD stopped in-person classes last spring.
Both of Estrada’s boys went to Rosemont Elementary School last year. When classes went online due to COVID-19, each boy had a few different teachers, each of whom used a slightly different system for communicating with their classes.
Just keeping track of everything caused Estrada headaches. She had a hard time getting a handle on weekly lesson plans. She and the boys had to go to several different websites to find assignments from each teacher, complete them and check each assignment off once it was done.
“It was a little bit of a hot mess,” Estrada said.
With the beginning of online classes less than two weeks away, Fort Worth ISD teachers and administrators are working to get students and their parents ready for distance learning. For district leaders, part of that effort is reassuring parents like Estrada that their children’s online classes will be better organized and more effective than classes were last spring.
“It’ll be quite different,” said Fort Worth Superintendent Kent Scribner. “We’re calling it Virtual 2.0.”
Fort Worth bar owner says he’ll continue to open amid COVID despite governor’s order
Despite being handed citations and knowing that his liquor license could be revoked, Chris Polone, owner of the Rail Club Live in Fort Worth, says he will continue to open his bar and keep selling alcohol.
After being closed for most of the year during the coronavirus pandemic, income is down and bills are up. So Polone and some other bar owners across the state opened up for good on Saturday as part of the movement dubbed Come and Take It, he said.
Polone along with other bar owners also opened a month ago for one day during Freedom Fest, an event that was meant to show that bars could open safely just like restaurants and how owners believed Gov. Greg Abbott’s June 26 executive order that shut down bars was unfair. The Fort Worth bar owner had his liquor license suspended about a month ago.
On Monday, Polone called Come and Take It a success. He said he opened up with a 25% occupancy limit, enforced mask-wearing, and had hand sanitizing stations.
On Saturday, Polone said, Fort Worth code compliance officials didn’t issue him a citation. Instead they went over guidelines and allowed him to continue. But hours later, he was left confused when he got a call from the Code Compliance Department asking him to shut down. He believes the turnaround was because of the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission agents who showed up afterward and put pressure on the city.
Fifth-graders, staffers at Keller middle school quarantined for 2 weeks due to COVID
Fifth-grade students from Indian Springs Middle School who were attending in-person classes are in quarantine for the next two weeks after three staff members tested positive for COVID-19.
The school district issued a written statement Monday morning which said that “Due to the volume of close contacts, and out of an abundance of caution, all 145 in-person fifth-grade students and the fifth-grade staff are in quarantine and have transitioned to remote learning for 14 days.”
According to the school district’s COVID-19 dashboard, there are a total of 11 positive COVID-19 cases in the district. Seven students tested positive as well as four employees.
This Fort Worth hotel will be converted into apartments for the COVID-vulnerable
A HomeTowne Studios extended-stay hotel off North Beach Street and Loop 820 is likely to be the future home for Fort Worth residents facing homelessness who are at particularly high risk of COVID-19.
Fort Worth Housing Solutions, the city’s housing authority, will purchase the hotel at 3804 Tanacross Drive with the hope of redeveloping it into permanent supportive housing by December. That’s the deadline to spend nearly $10 million in federal CARES Act dollars the city allocated for supportive housing. The housing authority expects to serve 119 people who are homeless and at a greater risk of coronavirus because of their age or underling health risks.
Unlike a typical shelter, permanent supportive housing provides long-term housing for those who need additional care, such as medical treatment, counseling or rehab. The city has committed to spending $350,000 to help support these services.
The City Council must approve necessary zoning on Sept. 15.
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.
Women say they face COVID, lack of food, abuse at ‘house of horror’ Fort Worth prison
Inmates incarcerated at the only federally-run medical prison for women in the country say they have been subjected to a “house of horror” over the past few months.
As of last week, 73 women have signed onto a potential class-action suit against Federal Medical Center Carswell, its warden and several officials and officers.
In more than 200 pages of handwritten testimony, women describe meals of rotten food, negligent medical care and malicious treatment as COVID-19 ran through the prison.
“While the public only hears one side of the major business (BOP and FMC Carswell), the forgotten lives of mothers, daughters, grandmas, granddaughters, sisters all live against every CDC guideline,” the lawsuit says.
In response to allegations of mistreatment at FMC Carswell, the Bureau of Prisons sent a statement on its general policies for handling COVID-19. In part of the statement, the BOP said its care and treatment of inmates follows CDC guidelines “with regard to quarantine and isolation procedures, along with providing appropriate treatment.”
Women fight for release from Fort Worth prison. Some with COVID died while waiting.
In late March, Marie Neba filed for an emergency hearing to receive compassionate release and get out of Fort Worth’s FMC Carswell prison because of the coronavirus pandemic.
She described herself, in a phone conversation with the Star-Telegram, as at “crazy risk” if she contracted COVID-19. Neba had stage 4 breast cancer, diabetes and hypertension. Yet she was sleeping in a crowded room with other inmates, and almost nobody around her wore masks.
In late June, her fears had increased: After the federal government opposed her compassionate release and a case worker told her she wasn’t eligible for home confinement because she hadn’t served half her sentence, Neba wrote to a federal judge, “I don’t think I will make it here if I continue under such horrible conditions.”
On July 3, two days before her 56th birthday, Neba tested positive for COVID-19. Carswell was enduring one of the worst federal prison outbreaks in the nation, with about 500 women out of 1,300-plus at the facility contracting the virus in July. Although the Bureau of Prisons stated medical staff considered Neba to have recovered by Aug. 4, it also stated she began suffering from abdominal pain and shortness of breath, both symptoms of COVID, on Aug. 10.
Neba was transferred to a private hospital and eventually placed on a ventilator, according to her attorney, Zachary Newland. Newland made another request for compassionate release to the U.S. Department of Justice — so her three children wouldn’t have to watch her wearing handcuffs during the last days of her life — but it went unheard before she died on Aug. 25.
Neba’s story has been all too common in America’s federal prisons since March. Despite Attorney General William Barr ordering prisons to prioritize the release of vulnerable inmates to prevent the spread of COVID-19, both the Bureau of Prisons and Barr’s own Department of Justice have routinely resisted the use of compassionate release and home confinement, leaving many prisoners, especially those at Federal Medical Center Carswell, at great risk.
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.
Tarrant County reports no COVID-19 deaths Monday, 131 new cases
Tarrant County reported 131 new coronavirus cases and no new deaths on Monday.
The county now has reported a total of 41,617 cases and 552 deaths, according to Tarrant County data. There have also been an estimated 35,975 recoveries.
The start of the week follows the county’s downward trend in new daily cases from last week.
According to county data, hospitalizations also continue to trend down. As of Monday, 7% of all occupied hospital beds are in use by confirmed COVID-19 patients. This number is down from the peak of 20% the county reported a month ago.
The county’s test positivity rate continues to hover around 9%. This statistic is important for county health officials who have said they want to maintain it below the 10% mark.
Vinny Taneja, the county’s public health director, has credited the downward trends to mask-wearing and social distancing.
Dallas County reports 1 death and 460 coronavirus cases Monday. But only 292 are new.
Dallas County reported 460 additional coronavirus cases and one death on Monday.
Of the 460 cases, only 292 are new, county officials said. The other 168 backlogged cases are from June and July, according to a Dallas County press release. The Texas Department of State Health Services discovered an error in its data reporting system three weeks ago and has worked to add previously unreported cases throughout the state since.
The new death being reported is of a Dallas man in his 50s. He was found dead in his home. He had underlying health conditions.
The county has now reported a total of 71,630 confirmed cases, including 902 confirmed deaths, according to the press release. In addition, the total number of probable cases in Dallas County is 2,946, including eight probable deaths from COVID-19.
County officials also noted that from Aug. 8 through Aug. 21, 393 school-aged children between the ages of 5 to 18 have COVID-19 and estimate that 51% of these children are enrolled in the Dallas Independent School District.
County Judge Clay Jenkins tweeted Monday that the county continues to see daily case numbers decrease.
“The trends are going in the right direction, but we must continue to be diligent about mask wearing, social distancing, hand-washing and avoiding unnecessary trips and indoor places where masks cannot be or are not being worn 100% of the time,” Jenkins tweeted.
Texas Democrats urge federal appeals court to allow voters of all ages to vote by mail
With the November general election just nine weeks away, the Texas Democratic Party was back in court Monday arguing before a federal appeals court that Texas’ mail-in ballot requirements discriminate against voters under 65.
A panel of three judges on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments over whether Texas’ age limit of 65 years and over violates provisions of the 26th Amendment — which prohibits age from being used as the basis to deny someone the right to vote.
Under Texas law, voters can only qualify for an absentee ballot if they submit an application and are either 65 or older, disabled, out of the county on Election Day and during in-person early voting, or confined in jail.