El Paso’s virus hospitalizations double as total cases top 1,000

EL PASO, Texas — Just a day after citing a decline in hospitalizations due to cornavirus, El Paso health officials on Monday evening said the number of virus patients in the hospital was actually more than double what they had reported.

They also announced that the county surpassed a milestone 1,000 total confirmed cases, while active virus cases now outweighed the number of recoveries.

The Public Health Department reported 31 new cases bringing the county’s cumulative count to 1,029. The number of deaths remained unchanged at 22.

To date, officials indicated 486 El Pasoans had recovered from the virus, but that left a larger 521 county residents who had active cases.

There were 65 patients hospitalized as of Monday evening, which was up from the 31 people reported to have been hospitalized on Sunday evening.

Health officials suggested a "clerical error" had resulted in the numbers of hospitalizations on Sunday being wrongly reported. They now said there were actually 59 people in the hospital Sunday due to the virus, which meant a touted decline in the hospitalization rate didn't really occur.

Below is the latest coronavirus case locator map and other demographic information on the virus outbreak as provided by the health department.

The map shows the amount of positive cases by zip codes, with the number of cases in red dots: 79821 (2), 79835 (27), 79836 (6), 79838 (9), 79849 (18), 79853 (16), 79901 (1), 79902 (13), 79903 (40), 79904 (31), 79905 (53), 79907 (51), 79911 (6), 79912 (78), 79915 (40), 79922 (5), 79924 (42), 79925 (42), 79927 (55), 79928 (68), 79930 (28), 79932 (38), 79934 (28), 79935 (26), 79936 (149), 79938 (157)