Active Covid-19 cases in Texas nursing homes drop by 80% since December
El Paso, Texas — Once known Covid-19 hotspots, active virus cases at nursing homes in Texas have dropped nearly 80 percent since late December to early March, according to data complied by ABC-7 from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services.
More than 6,500 residents in nursing homes had Covid-19 on Dec. 31. As of Feb. 25, 1,624 nursing home residents had the virus throughout the state, according to Texas DHHS. That number declined even more in early March.
Assistant living facilities across the state also saw a sharp decrease in active Covid-19 cases, a nearly 84 percent drop from Dec. 31, 2020 to March 4, 2021.
El Paso County, listed under region 2, saw a 75 percent drop from 546 to 133. (It’s important to note there are other counties listed in region 2 along with El Paso.) According to El Paso’s Department of Health, a total of 1,944 residents in “elderly facilities” have been infected since the pandemic began. 117 people unfortunately died.
The decline in cases is a national trend being seeing across the country. According to data complied by the New York Times, new cases among nursing home residents are at their lowest since May - a nearly 80 percent drop in active Covid-19 cases in the U.S. since Dec.
Experts, according to the NY Times, are attributing a large part of the decline to the distribution of vaccines.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 82.5 million doses of the vaccine have been administered throughout the country. 1.3 millions residents of long term care facilities in the U.S., have been fully vaccinated, 166,679 of those are in Texas, along with more than 871,000 staff members.
