Tarrant County’s COVID spike is worst in Texas: ‘The chickens have come home to roost’
There’s really no good way to get into this, other than to rip the band-aid straight off: The last few weeks, Tarrant County has struggled to control the coronavirus pandemic worse than anywhere in Texas.
On Wednesday, its two-week new case count for COVID-19 was 35,515, the highest number in the state. It had been at about 38,000 two days earlier and marked a rise from around 17,000 in late December. Its new case rate of 17.6 per 1,000 population on Wednesday was nearly double the state’s rate of 9.7, and higher than any large Texas county. (Harris County was at 6.7). Even Los Angeles County, seen as a national epicenter for spread — and so troubling that its Rose Bowl football game was moved to Arlington — has fared better. Its cases per 1,000 for the last two weeks was 15.7.
Elected officials have dismissed the potential danger of case counts and focused on hospitalizations, but those rates have also been troubling. On Jan. 1, the same day AT&T Stadium hosted the Rose Bowl, 99% of adult ICU beds in Tarrant County were occupied. It was the highest share throughout the pandemic and the peak of a steady rise from levels that hovered around 80% in the early fall. (Of total county hospital beds, about 85% have been occupied in recent days.) As the state reels from its highest COVID hospitalization levels yet, Tarrant County is a clear driving force. It represented 11% of Texas’ total hospitalizations on Monday, despite having just 7% of the state’s residents. More populous Dallas County, also facing a surge in infections and record hospitalizations, has consistently had about 300 fewer daily hospitalized COVID patients than Tarrant over the last week.
Deaths have risen, too. Lately, Tarrant County has been seeing around 15 to 30 coronavirus deaths per day. As of Wednesday, its population-adjusted daily average death rate for the last seven days was about 40% higher than Dallas’ and all of Texas’.
The pandemic has affected the state’s big metros with differing levels of severity through the last 10 months, but Tarrant County’s last couple of weeks have been as bad as the worst weeks of any of the top five most populous counties. Harris County, at an infection peak in late July, was seeing case counts around 15 per 1,000 population and about 30 to 40 deaths per day, a comparable rate to Tarrant County now, adjusted for population. Other than much smaller communities, only Hidalgo and El Paso counties, roughly half the size of Tarrant, have reported substantially higher infection and death rates than what Tarrant County is seeing now.
“Tarrant County managed to get lucky and managed to escape and basically the chickens have come home to roost, unfortunately,” said Benjamin Neuman, a professor of biology and chief virologist at Texas A&M who has closely observed COVID’s spread throughout the state. “That’s the thing with viruses and protecting against viruses. If you don’t wear a mask for one day sometimes you can get away with it. If you don’t wear a mask every day, it catches up with you.”
From the outset of the pandemic, Neuman noted, Tarrant County was a step behind in instituting measures for mitigating the disease. It also didn’t help that various officials in Tarrant County, most prominently in Colleyville, pushed back against restrictions.
Although Gov. Greg Abbott removed most powers for handling COVID from local governments, Tarrant has lagged in precautions and messaging that are routine elsewhere. Harris County and Dallas County, for instance, opted to keep bars closed in the fall, while Tarrant County opened them until rising hospitalization rates forced a shutdown in December. Because most bars used a loophole to stay open as restaurants the decision had no practical effect, but it was indicative of wider messaging. Cities like San Antonio and counties like Harris, Dallas and Travis have publicized rating systems that educate the public on the severity of COVID’s spread and the actions they should be taking; Tarrant County doesn’t have one. (The city of Fort Worth doesn’t either, although the city and Mayor Betsy Price have promoted mask wearing.) Tarrant County did, however, send a text message alert ahead of Thanksgiving to discourage gatherings, a warning it hasn’t used since.
In November, county public health director Vinny Taneja expressed concern residents were, understandably, beginning to show signs of pandemic fatigue. Data backs that up. Carnegie Mellon, which coordinates surveys with Facebook to gauge behavioral patterns, found Tarrant County had about double the amount of restaurant traffic in December as Dallas, Travis and Harris counties, adjusted for population.
Of course, outsiders have occupied plenty of the tables. Starting in August, when the city of Fort Worth reopened the convention center (two months ahead of Dallas; Austin’s is still closed except for use as a field hospital), visitors have come to Tarrant County for various events. And the county — thanks to strategizing from city officials and business leaders and the governor’s rules — was a landing spot for events that needed a home where spectators could gather. The World Series came in the fall, and the Rose Bowl moved from Pasadena to Arlington. “EVERYTHING is moving to Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbott gushed in a December tweet about nabbing the prestigious game.
The biggest event was the National Finals Rodeo. The NFR’s organizers were looking for a new home after finding in-person attendance was not feasible in Las Vegas. Leaders from Arlington and Fort Worth welcomed the event, which brought thousands to Globe Life Field, downtown Fort Worth and the Stockyards over 10 days. On the first Saturday of the event, the Stockyards were jammed with people waiting in lines on sidewalks and partying on side streets. Not all wore a mask, and the same could be said for the inside of some venues.
The city used $1.5 million in CARES Act funding to provide about 30,000 rapid tests at NFR testing stations. Only 724 were used, with 95 coming back positive for a 13% test positivity rate. Statewide the positivity rate for similar tests was about 7% to 9% during the same time frame. “The numbers ended up being about 50% higher than for the same tests around the rest of the state on the same day,” Neuman said. “You were 50% more likely to run into a COVID patient at the rodeo than in a doctor’s waiting room.”
Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, who has expressed concern about events like the Southwest Believers Convention and youth sporting games (as well as his lack of say in regulating them), has heard from county public health officials that the recent spike is related more to the holidays than the NFR or other events. But Tarrant County’s public health staff has been overwhelmed since the summer and lately has been taking thousands of calls per day regarding vaccines on top of its already hectic workload.
Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston, said without adequate contact tracing it has been difficult to track spread. Of the likely culprits for a higher rise in Tarrant County relative to other large counties, she listed a few possibilities: higher lack of adherence to social distancing and masking, large indoor events, lack of strong communication about the seriousness of the virus from religious and political leaders, and a more infectious variant of COVID.
Whitley, in a phone call Wednesday, reflected on the recent surge and his limited powers as a county judge in this crisis. “I’m not sure I would’ve done things much differently,” he said. “As I said earlier a lot of folks are saying we should lock everything down and they’re focused on the number of positive cases. That’s never been my focus. My focus has been on keeping the hospitals (from being overcrowded) and second keeping business open.”
In the gloom of Tarrant County’s worst days of the pandemic, there is a bright spot. Tarrant’s public health department was off to a faster start for vaccinations than other large departments throughout the state, vaccinating 1,200 people a day last week and even more now that new testing sites have opened.
Still, Neuman warns it isn’t time to forget about the spread of COVID. “I think there’s a tendency to think of COVID as something that has been put upon us and has to be dealt with and is nobody’s fault,” he said. “In reality this is a thing that grows when we allow it to grow and stops when we try to stop it.”
This story was originally published January 15, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
