Dallas County Health and Human Services reported 1 death and 311 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19, today, Sep. 28.  The total case count in Dallas County jumped to 81,372 with 1,021 total deaths to date.

The total number of probable cases in Dallas County is 4,038, including 13 probable deaths from COVID-19.

The total new cases today include 62 from Texas Department of State Health Services were from May (1), June (3), July (2), August (5) and September (51).

The city of Sachse reported two additional COVID cases;  the 300th is a 47-year-old woman and the 301st is a 75-year-old woman, both in Collin County

The additional death being reported today in Dallas County is a man in his 90’s who was a resident of the City of Lancaster. He had been critically ill in an area hospital and had underlying high risk health conditions.

The provisional 7-day average daily new confirmed and probable cases (by date of test collection) for CDC week 38 was 296, an increase from the previous daily average of 258 for CDC week 37. The percentage of respiratory specimens testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 remains high, with 11.9% of symptomatic patients presenting to area hospitals testing positive in week 38.

A provisional total of 225 confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases were diagnosed in school-aged children (5 to 17 years) during CDC week 38 (week ending 9/19/2020), an increase from the previous week for this age group. The percentage of cases occurring in young adults aged 18 to 22 years has increased to 14% for the month of September.

Of the cases requiring hospitalization to date, more than two-thirds (66%) have been under 65 years of age, and over half reported having a chronic health condition. Diabetes has been an underlying high-risk health condition reported in about a third of all hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

Local health experts use hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and ER visits as three of the key indicators in determining the COVID-19 Risk Level (color-coded risk) and corresponding guidelines for activities during our COVID-19 response. Due to weekend reporting, new data will be available on Tuesday, September 29, 2020.

“Today we have a total of 311 COVID-19 positive cases, 11 of which are old and 114 of which are probable cases. Probable cases are most often from the nuclear family of a confirmed positive PCR COVID-19 test. When you look at the numbers of confirmed positive PCR tests, that number is 197.

It’s very important that we focus on taking common sense and scientifically proven steps to keep ourselves safe during this time where the state is beginning to see an uptick in cases and our numbers remain flat but our progress has stopped and we may begin to see a tick up. You cannot control what happens over the next two weeks because those numbers will be decided by what we did in the past due to the incubation period of the virus. We can control what happens 10-14 days from now.

 Wear your mask, maintain six-foot distance, wash your hands frequently, avoid unnecessary trips, and avoid any activity that’s indoors where masks cannot be worn one hundred percent of the time. If you choose to eat at a restaurant, consider patio dining. If you choose organized workouts, consider working out outside the building in the fall weather and not inside of an indoor facility with heavy breathing and without masks. If we all will put community health over our selfish desires to do the few things that the doctors tell us are still not safe, we hopefully can have a safer fall that allows for more freedom. But how the fall and winter goes is largely up to each of you,” said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.

From Staff Reports • [email protected]