EL PASO, Texas – El Paso County easily covered 16,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus on Saturday morning as it killed 300 people from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Health officials reported five new deaths, increasing the death toll to 291 – with 22 of those killed last week. There have now been 20 consecutive days of reported deaths in El Paso County, which is by far the longest stretch of the pandemic.
The latest reported deaths involved three men in their 70s and two men in their 90s, health officials said. To date, data show that the number of men killed by the virus in El Paso County is disproportionately higher than women.
Officials also reported 132 additional virus cases on Saturday, bringing the total number so far to 16,040. To end the week, the province said 1,630 additional infections and data from the health department reflect an increase of 13.2% in cases over the previous 7-day period – ending what was a several-week decline in the rate of new infections .
Also on the rise is the province’s positivity rate – the percentage of tests that return positive for the virus. The rolling 7-day positivity rate is now 12.02% in El Paso, significantly above Johns Hopkins University’s recommended positivity rate of 5% or less.
The percentage of positive tests that are asymptomatic – meaning there are no outward signs of infection but are viral – is now at 22%, which is slightly up.
Hospitalizations continued to move downward on Saturday, dropping to 234. That is the lowest number of hospital patients in just one month. There were 78 of those patients who were reported for intensive care, with the number requiring the use of a ventilator increasing from five to 38 over the past day.
As of Saturday, there were 11,842 returned cases listed in El Paso. Recent medical research, however, shows that some of the remedies may have sustained health consequences from infection.
