For the eighth day in a row, Texas has recorded more than 1,000 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus indicating that infections are not easing even as the state continues to move toward openness.
The Texas Department of State Health Services now has recorded 45,198 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, an increase of 1,347 from Thursday, which saw a record amount of new cases.
Texas also 56 new deaths related to COVID-19, bringing the total to 1,272 deaths attributable to the pandemic. The daily fatality total is just two shy of the record number of Texas deaths attributed to the disease, which was also set Thursday.
CORONAVIRUS IN TEXAS: What we know, latest updates
While the data suggest that the coronavirus is now spreading faster than it ever was, the number of new cases might be skewed as testing has greatly accelerated in recent days.
DSHS reported 22,708 new tests Friday. Over the last three days, the agency has seen a daily average of nearly 36,000 new coronavirus tests — a number more than twice of what testing was at one week ago. As those numbers have grown, the amount of positive tests has fallen to a cumulative total of 7%, according to DSHS. A month ago, 10% of tests were coming back as positive.
New cases have continued to outpace recoveries. On Friday, Texas had 18,472 active cases. Hospitalizations have remained steady with 1,716 reported Friday, according to DSHS.
The virus is now present in 222 of Texas’ 254 counties. New infections arose for the first time in Archer, Fisher and Haskell counties, which each recorded one new confirmed case. All three counties are due west of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex nearing Abilene.
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