The new cases bring Fort Bend County's total case count to 4,346. With 1,405 people known to have recovered from the virus and 59 people who have died from it, there are 2,882 active cases.
As of July 7, there are 235 people being treated for suspected or confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Fort Bend County hospitals, down 31 from July 6, according to data from the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council. Of these patients, 45 are in hospitals' intensive care units.
FBCHHS Director Dr. Jacquelyn Minter said during the July 7 Commissioners Court meeting that she is hearing from hospitals that their emergency rooms are full. Minter, who is also serving as the local health authority, said the county is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to establish an alternate care sites in case hospitals reach capacity.
"We're working on alternate care sites so that in the event hospitals do reach capacity—they're working at pre-surge levels now—we can be able to take that overflow,” Minter said.
July 7 SETRAC data shows Fort Bend County hospitals have 28 unoccupied ICU beds and 331 available general beds. Coronavirus patients occupy 59.2% of ICU beds in use and 31.1% of general beds in use, according to SETRAC data.
To date, Fort Bend County has performed 32,575 coronavirus tests at its county-run testing locations and is averaging about 1,000 tests per day.
Minter said FBCHHS is seeing approximately 10% of the tests it performs yielding a positive result.
“Right now we are averaging about a 10% positivity rate in the tests that we are having at our facilities," Minter said. "We had a peak of 15% about a week ago, and we are now at approximately 8%-10%.”
Missouri City ZIP code 77459 has the highest number of coronavirus cases of any Fort Bend County ZIP code at 483 cases, according to Fort Bend County's data. Two other Richmond ZIP codes have more than 400 coronavirus cases.
All data in this story is accurate as of 6 p.m. July 7. Read more of Community Impact Newspaper's coverage of the coronavirus in Katy and Sugar Land and Missouri City.
