Per a recent executive order issued by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, if COVID-19 patients occupy 15% or more of available hospital beds in a county for seven consecutive days, municipal governments must scale up restrictions once again. This would entail closing bars and reducing capacity of local businesses and restaurants from the currently permitted 75% back down to 50%. For the last 10 days, COVID-19 patients have accounted for around 20% of inpatient hospitalizations across Denton County.
While hospitalizations have surged, the number of daily active cases has increased, too. Since mid-October, the number of daily active cases in Denton County has nearly doubled. On Oct. 22, the number of daily active cases was 2,563. On Nov. 24, Denton County had 5,092 active cases. Collin County has changed how it tracks COVID-19 in recent weeks. Since the Collin County Commissioner’s Court voted 3-2 on Nov. 9 to remove data from the county COVID-19 dashboard—citing inaccuracies as the reason for the decision—only daily hospitalizations are available.
Old data for any metric other than daily hospitalizations cannot be accessed retroactively through the county’s public COVID-19 dashboard or through public information requests to the county, according to Tim Wyatt, public information officer for Collin County.
As a result, Community Impact Newspaper does not have access to updated information regarding active daily cases in Collin County from the last few weeks.
In Collin County, COVID-19 patients occupy 10.5% of available county hospital beds.
As of Nov. 24, 16 Frisco residents who live within Denton County boundaries have died of COVID-19 complications. Since Oct. 31, 37 Collin County residents and nine Denton County residents have died of COVID-19 complications.
