The Department of Public Health in Tarrant County says the ICUs in the province have a capacity of 97% on Wednesday while adding another 3,410 new cases of COVID-19, along with another 12 deaths.
According to the TCPH COVID-19 dashboard, there were 1,489 COVID-19 patients in county hospitals by Tuesday, 73 more than Monday. COVID-19 patients make up 29% of all rural hospital patients and 25.4% of all hospital patients in TSA-E. The total occupancy of beds for all hospital beds in the country is now 87%, a decrease of 3% from Tuesday. Adult ICU capacity in Tarrant County has decreased to 97% according to the TCPH COVID-19 dashboard.
Although hospital capacity is nearing 100%, officials last week stressed that they plan to expand capacity if necessary.
“Hospitals have plans for pandemic recovery. Let me not scare people that they do not know or do not have the capacity. They do, but do you really want to expand the capacity? We already know that we have few staff,” said Vinnu Taneja, director of public health in Tarrant County, said Tuesday. ‘Staff have been working in the hospital for almost ten months and deal with a lot of COVID and diseases. They are tired. Some of them had COVID, relatives of COVID, and some of them died. Do you really want to stretch? that capacity? ‘
Click here for more information if you would like to register to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in Tarrant County.
In the past seven days, the country has announced 18,400 new and probable cases of the virus, or an average of 2,628 per day. According to the country’s health department, there were 2,777 more confirmed cases than the latest report and 633 more likely cases. To date, the province has reported 144,103 confirmed cases of the virus and 21,185 probable cases for a total of 165,288 cases.
The province also reports another 1,799 estimated repairs, bringing the total number of survivors to 118,933. There are currently an estimated 44,794 active cases in the state, the most of any province in North Texas.
The latest victims included a man from Arlington in his 90s, a man from Euless in his 90s, a woman from Fort Worth in her 90s, a woman from Hurst in her 90s, a woman from the non- recorded Tarrant County in her 90s, a North Richland Hills woman in her 80s, an Arlington woman in her 80s, a Bedford man in his 80s, a Mansfield man in his 80s, two women from Fort Worth in their 80s and a man from Arlington in his 60s. All had underlying health conditions.
TCPH now reports 1,561 deaths attributed to the virus since March 2020.
Land officials also said Wednesday that 9,390 vaccines had been distributed in the country.
Tarrant County, which extended its mask mandate to February 28, 2021, began reporting both probable and confirmed cases of COVID-19 in August 2020 at the request of the Department of State Health. Likely cases, according to the province, are responsible for a variety of real-world situations and may highlight issues in the community that might not otherwise be reported.
COVID-19 causes a respiratory illness with cough, fever and shortness of breath and can lead to bronchitis, severe pneumonia or even death. For more information, go to coronavirus.tarrantcounty.com or call the Public Health Information Line in Tarrant County, 817-248-6299, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.