Total of 10,891 new cases of COVID-19 statewide during first week of June

By LYNETTE SOWELL

Cove Leader-Press 

Two Copperas Cove women have been added to the list of confirmed positive cases of COVID-19, as of Monday afternoon. 

Copperas Cove Emergency Management Coordinator/Deputy Fire Chief Gary Young issued a press release, which revealed that a woman in her 30s and another in her 40s had positive test results on Friday. 

This brings the current total for Copperas Cove to 39 cases, 19 currently active and 18 recovered. Of the 19 active cases, seven are hospitalized. 

A total of 10,981 new cases were lab-confirmed in the state of Texas from June 1-7.

During his announcement of the Phase III timeline, Gov. Greg Abbott stated that between May 26 and June 2, more than 45% of new COVID-19 cases in the state came from jails or prisons, meat packing plants and nursing homes. 

Altogether, there are a total of 74,978 confirmed positive cases statewide, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services online report. 

Of those cases, an estimated 49,758 have recovered, or 66.3%, leaving an estimated 23,390 active cases. Of those 23,390 cases, 1,938 are presently hospitalized, or about 8.2%.

As state, county, and city officials try to keep abreast of the confirmed positive cases, there has been some discrepancy in some of the numbers. The Texas Department of State Health Services coordinates the count for positive confirmed cases in counties, such as Coryell, which does not have a county health district to do so. Those numbers are then passed to the county and city officials. However, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, also a state agency, has been tracking numbers for both its inmates housed in units and the staff who work there. 

During Monday’s meeting of the Coryell County commissioners court, County Emergency Management Coordinator Bob Harrell gave the most recent county numbers. 

“As of this morning, we had 243 cases. We probably will have another update report this morning,” Harrell said, adding that the county has the opportunity to host yet another round of mobile testing sites. “The key to manage our infection is basically to test, test, and continue to test.” 

Coryell County Judge Roger Miller also discussed the case number discrepancies with the TDSHS, along with the TDCJ’s reports and case counts. 

“The dashboard for TDCJ and Region 7 don’t necessarily correlate. There is a lot of difference in numbers and we are working with Region 7 to get that ironed out. Three cases are Lampasas County, and I am trying to work with Region 7 to get that corrected,” Miller said. 

“So if you look at 240, of those 240, if you go back about 10 days, to the 27th of May, we had 225 (cases). So we’ve had a 15-case increase in the last 10 days. Four of those were inmate cases. So we are at the rate of a new case per day.

“If you think (COVID-19) is still not in our community, I would urge you to rethink that assessment, because the numbers indicate we are getting at least one new case a day,” Miller said, and also expressed his thoughts on the number discrepancies. 

“Region 7 did send some new criteria. They have been battling with this. TDCJ plays by their own rules and they have communicated to the state that they are their own district and will manage their own numbers.” 

“If you look on the state dashboard, it’ll show you a case count of 292, with the next group that will come out this morning. But, there are 50 cases we have no data on whatsoever, if they are male or female…we have been told that they are inmate cases that have not been recovered. 

“We have 243, and I can show you an address or age or gender, but there are 50 cases out there I cannot confirm nor deny where they might be, who they might be, what it is.” 

According to the Coryell County COVID-19 tracker, there are a total of 31 active cases within the county, which as of press time did not include the two new cases from Copperas Cove. Altogether, 43 have recovered. 

Those with confirmed active cases in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice facilities in Coryell County are also recovering. 

As of Saturday, the most recent update of the TDCJ online COVID-19 reporting dashboard, there were 28 active cases within the county’s six facilities, to include Crain (1), Hughes (3), Murray (12), and Woodman (12). Altogether, 188 of the inmates have recovered inside the prison units in Coryell County. 

Statewide, the three counties with highest positive numbers are Harris, Dallas, and Tarrant Counties, with Harris County topping all 254 Texas counties, having 14,423 cases, and 5,583 of those cases recovered. In Dallas County, a total of 7,467 of its 11,830 cases have recovered. In Tarrant County, with 6,073 cases, 2,566 have recovered. 

Nationwide as of Sunday, there were 1,920,904 cases in the United States, with 29,214 new cases added, and 709 additional deaths from the virus, with that total reaching 109,901.