Hospitals in Collin and Denton counties continued to see elevated levels of coronavirus patients following the Thanksgiving holiday.
In Collin County, 295 beds are reported as occupied by confirmed COVID-19 patients, or 10.9% of available beds as of Dec. 1. This is lower than the most recent peak of 322 occupied beds Nov. 17, but filled beds have remained above 260 since the first week of November.
Denton County hospitals on Dec. 1 reported that 16.4% of their beds were occupied by confirmed COVID-19 patients, according to the county dashboard. The total number of coronavirus patients in Denton County hospitals, 140, is a little more than four times higher than the levels recorded before the current upward trajectory began in early October.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott established in a previous executive order that areas whose COVID-19 hospitalizations remain above 15% of total beds for seven consecutive days would have to reduce business capacity to 50% and shut down bars, among other steps, to slow the spread of the coronavirus, as previously reported by Community Impact Newspaper. Denton and Collin county hospitals are part of a 19-county trauma service area, which has now been above the 15% threshold for four consecutive days.
Explore the latest Collin and Denton county hospitalization trends in the chart below. While a dashboard showing new cases, active cases, recovered cases and deaths is no longer available from Collin County, Plano offers some data at the city level.
Plano has also seen a rise in new daily cases in recent weeks. In the seven-day period between Nov. 24-Dec. 1, there were 793 new confirmed cases reported. The seven days prior, there were 725 new cases, according to the city's dashboard.
There have been 6,533 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Plano from both Collin and Denton counties as of Dec. 1, of which 5,837 have recovered. There are 696 active cases in Plano, according to the city's dashboard. There have been 26,600 total reported cases of COVID-19 in Collin County since reporting began in March and 23,644 total cases in Denton County as of Nov. 23. Since Nov. 23, there have been 2,816 new cases reported in Collin County and 1,707 new cases in Denton County. This is roughly a 300-case increase over the number of new cases reported the week prior in Collin County and a 908-case decrease over the same week in Denton County.
The numbers of confirmed cases are dependent on the number of tests administered, which is why the state tracks the positivity rate as another one of its key indicators.
The state's weekly positivity rate hit a record high of 24% as of Aug. 11 and after dropping substantially has recently come closer to 9%. The rate is averaged over the previous seven days and calculates the ratio of new cases to the number of tests conducted.
