North Texas reached its highest level of confirmed COVID-19 patients in hospital beds since mid-February on Aug. 5.
As of that date, 12.41% of the hospital beds in Trauma Service Area E, which consists of 19 counties in North Texas including Collin and Denton counties, were occupied by confirmed COVID-19 patients, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services dashboard. That marks the first time since Feb. 19 that the trauma service area has been over 12%. It is also a more than 322% increase from the 2.94% of hospital beds occupied by confirmed COVID-19 patients on July 5. The Collin County dashboard lists 258 hospitalized COVID-19 patients out of the 2,702 available beds, as of Aug. 5. The Denton County dashboard showed it had more than 13% of its available beds filled by COVID-19 patients, as of Aug. 5.
Collin County announced in August 2020 that it would no longer report city-specific coronavirus information. Plano stopped providing city-specific COVID-19 information on July 1. As of Aug. 5, there have been 212 total cases reported in Denton County’s portion of Plano, according to the Denton County dashboard. All but 16 of those cases have been classified as recovered, the dashboard shows.
In Collin County, there have been 80,672 confirmed cases and 869 deaths, though just 3,003 cases are estimated as active as of Aug. 6 on the DSHS dashboard. In Denton County, 80,500 were confirmed to have had the virus as of Aug. 5, and 633 were confirmed dead. The Denton County dashboard listed 3,692 cases as active on Aug. 5.
The majority of the estimated population in five of the six main ZIP codes in Plano have been fully vaccinated, according to totals from DSHS.
The 75024 ZIP code has the highest percentage of fully vaccinated residents with nearly 65%, while the 75074 ZIP code has the lowest percentage with a little less than 48% of the estimated population fully vaccinated. Nearly 63% of Collin County residents age 12 and older have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of July 19, according to the DSHS COVID-19 vaccination dashboard. In Denton County, that number sits at nearly 58%.
The dashboard shows a combined estimate of more than 976,000 people in the two counties are reported as being fully vaccinated. DSHS estimates show there are close to 1.5 million residents age 16 and older in Collin and Denton counties, although vaccine appointments are not limited to county residents.
Nearly 27 million doses have been administered across Texas, and nearly 13 million people have been fully vaccinated since manufacturers began shipping vials to the state in December, according to the DSHS dashboard. Since March 29, all Texas adults are eligible to receive a vaccine for COVID-19. On May 10, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization for the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to those ages 12-15. COVID-19 vaccinations had previously been available only to those age 16 and older.
Collin County Health Care Services announced on July 27 the creation of mobile vaccination teams. Residents can request appointments for the free shots.
Denton County Public Health has an interest portal for vaccines on its webpage and allows individuals to schedule appointments.
Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify the percentage of Denton County hospital beds filled by COVID-19 patients.
