COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to rise, so too does the fatality rate and the number of COVID patients in the hospital and Northeast Texas. The 116th COVID-19 death and 249 active cases in people with Hopkins County zip codes had been reported as of 1:15 p.m. Saturday afternoon, Aug. 14, 2021, according to the DSHS COVID-19 Case Count dashboard.
On Friday, DSHS reported another Hopkins County resident has died from COVID. The death is not only the second reported over the last week, but is the second COVID death to have occurred on Aug. 6. Prior to that, there had been no Hopkins County COVID deaths since May 30.
So far, there have been 236 new COVID cases reported for Hopkins County this month, The last time Hopkins County has had even close to that many cumulative cases in a month was February – then, 269 new cases were reported in Hopkins County over the 28 days of the month. If case counts continue to surge, August could potentially reach or exceed October, December and January, the three months in which the most COVID cases and deaths. A total 580 COVID cases were recorded in October, 483 in December and 400 in January. Twenty-nine Hopkins County residents died from COVID-19 in October, 26 in December and 15 in January.
So far this month, 170 Hopkins County residents have received lab confirmed molecular COVID-19 results, 76 the first week and 94 this week, 28 of which were reported on Saturday. Another 66 Hopkins County residents were reported as new probable COVID cases, 22 the first week of August and 44 this week, including 10 new cases on Saturday – two of which were reported to be older cases. Cumulatively, 2,191 Hopkins County residents have received lab confirmed COVID test results since spring break 2020 and 1,813 probable cases since November of 2020.
Unfortunately, only 95 Hopkins County residents are reported to have recovered this month from the coronavirus, and only 39 this week. Cumulatively, 3,639 of the 4,004 cumulative Hopkins County residents reported to have COVID-19 since March of 2020. That leaves 249 active COVID-19 cases in Hopkins County as of 1:15 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 14, up from 108 active cases at the beginning of the month and 162 at the end of the first week of August.
Hospitals too are filling up across the state and across Region F Trauma Service Region with increasingly more COVID-19 cases, which many healthcare professionals report are mostly in people who have not received a COVID-19 vaccination. Cumulatively, there have been 2,804,145 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 21,896 new confirmed cases, 4,558 new probable cases and 117 newly reported fatalities. That makes a total of 203,083 active COVID cases in Texas on Saturday.
On Friday, 11,381 of the 60,608 hospitalizations in Texas consisted of lab-confirmed COVID-19 patients, that means that 21.34 percent of all hospitalizations in Texas are lab-confirmed to have COVID. Hospital COVID patients also took up 17.52 percent of the total hospital capacity in the state. according to the Aug. 14, 2021 DSHS’ “Combined Hospital Data over Time by TSA Region” report.
For the second day in a row, the overall capacity of all hospitals in Region F Trauma Service Area (which covers all of Northeast Texas including Hopkins County) remained above 20 percent. According to the DSHS COVID Hospitalizations dashboard, there was only one ICU bed available in the entire TSA F region. Of the 666 total hospitalizations in TSA F, 178 were lab-confirmed COVID-19 patients, representing 20.51 percent of the overall hospital capacity. COVID-19 patients account for 62 of the 88 ICU patients in TSA F and 7,473 of the ICU patients across the state.
