Texas coronavirus deaths: 1,000 people die in just 10 days

After COVID-19’s first death in Texas, a 97-year-old man in Matagorda County who died on March 15, it took 53 days for the state to reach 1,000 deaths. On Monday, Texas reached 4,020 deaths just 10 days after crossing the 3,000 threshold.

New coronavirus cases and hospitalizations have been increasing rapidly across Texas since early June, and the number of deaths is now increasing more rapidly, a “highly predictable” result, said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Public School. from UTHealth. Health in Houston.

During the past week, COVID-19 has killed an average of 112 people each day in Texas, almost three times more than two weeks ago. On July 6, the 7-day average was 36 deaths per day.

Troisi said the actual number of coronavirus-related deaths is higher.

“We can say with certainty that deaths are not counted,” he said. “If you die and you haven’t had a positive COVID test, even if you have all the symptoms, it doesn’t count as COVID death.”

“It’s still an open question to know how much bigger, but we expect the actual number to be larger,” said Spencer Fox, associate director of the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium.

Both health experts said they expect deaths from the virus to continue to rise in Texas for several more weeks, even as some local health authorities see signs of hospitalizations from the COVID-19 leveling. Over the past week, hospitalizations have ranged from 10,471 to 10,658, for a 7-day average of 10,564.

Troisi said he wants to see at least two weeks of hospitalization numbers in the same range before calling it a plateau.

The county’s hospitals and morgues are also filling up, especially in South Texas, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has dispatched 14 refrigerated trailers that will arrive in the state this week.

“What we are really doing is that we want to be prepared in advance, in case there is a need throughout our state,” said Seth Christensen, spokesperson for the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

With many funerals on hold due to pandemic restrictions, hospitals are seeing “an accumulation of deceased patients,” Mario Martinez, assistant director of San Antonio Metro Health, said last week.

Bexar County and the city of San Antonio secured three more refrigerated trailers last week, in addition to the two that are already operational.

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