Coronavirus live updates March 29: Here’s what to know in the Dallas-Fort Worth area
Two Fort Worth police officers have tested positive for coronavirus, according to a news release from the department.
The officers have self-isolated, and the department is working to reach anyone with whom they came in contact.
The officers worked in the same unit and had limited Fort Worth News close contact with others while at work, according to the release. Their office spaces are being disinfected.
Dallas officials warned Sunday they may have to close the city’s parks and trails to the public due to overcrowding and fears that people could spread the coronavirus.
In a statement, city officials said parks are too crowded and they have seen people not following social distancing rules, such as staying six feet apart. Two parks in particular — Katy Trail and White Rock Lake — have been overcrowded.
Officials are putting barricades at many entrances of the parks and trails, and will also limit vehicle traffic into parks.
Tarrant County officials confirmed 11 new coronavirus cases Sunday, bringing the total number to 139. Arlington reported four, while Fort Worth had three and Forest Hill, Keller, Hurst and Azle each had one. The case in Azle is the first confirmed by the city.
Dallas County reported one death and 49 new cases of coronavirus Sunday, bringing the total number of deaths to 10 and confirmed cases to 488.
Collin County reported six new coronavirus cases on Sunday. The county has confirmed 134 total cases.
Denton County Public Health on Saturday announced the county’s second COVID-19 related death. The patient, an Aubrey man in his 60s, was hospitalized and contracted the disease from local transmission, according to a news release.
Denton County reported 17 new cases on Sunday, bringing its total to 165 cases, 45 of which are at the Denton State Supported Living Center.
Johnson County confirmed four new cases Friday, for a total of six, and issued a stay-at-home order that took effect at midnight Friday.
The total number of cases in counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area is more than 900 as of Sunday.
Tap the map to see cases in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Pan the map to see cases elsewhere in the US. The data for the map is maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University and automated by the Esri Living Atlas team. Data sources are WHO, US CDC, China NHC, ECDC, and DXY. The data also includes local reports.
When Debbie Waddy Cates FaceTimes with her 32-year-old son, Michael Jameson, she tries to explain the state of his world in a way that will make sense to him.
Jameson, who’s non-verbal but can communicate through limited sign language, lives in the Denton State Supported Living Center, a home for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities that contains the largest cluster of coronavirus cases in Texas, with 45 residents testing positive as of Sunday.
Friendly contact is normally a big part of life here — residents high-five and hug each other, and congregate at campus hangouts. But Cates, 57, of Fort Worth, tells her son it can’t be that way for a little while.
She will ask him, almost every time they talk over FaceTime, to think about his little niece, one of his close friends.
The 7-year-old came down with a nasty case of the flu back in December. It got so bad she had to go to the hospital.
“We’ve been able to give him a perspective and say, ‘Remember Press Release Distribution Services In Fort Worth how Lucy was so sick?’” Cates told the Star-Telegram over the phone on Saturday. “‘This virus can make people that sick, too. And so in order to keep people from getting the virus, we have to stay in our homes.’ We just keep reminding him of that.”
The sprawling State Supported Living Center in Denton has been in a state of lockdown since cases first emerged more than a week ago, with no visitors allowed and the 440-plus residents ordered to stay on campus. Cates has been informed by her son’s caregivers of the expectation for the weeks ahead: The outbreak, she said, is poised to peak in the second week of April, “hitting very high numbers.” Several people could require hospitalization.
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