El Paso tops 13,000 virus cases as deaths rise by 3 amid growing ICU hospitalizations

EL PASO, Texas -- El Paso's coronavirus cases topped 13,000 on Sunday as the number of deaths grew by three more following the county's deadliest reported week of the pandemic, health officials said.

The latest fatalities included a woman and a man who were each in their 80s along with another woman in her 90s; all three had underlying conditions. The death tally is now 224, with nearly a quarter of those deaths occurring in local nursing homes.

The health department reported 269 new cases, bringing El Paso County's total to date to 13,240. Of those, 3,540 are active cases - which was up 138 from Saturday. Recoveries tallied 9,476, although experts note that some recovered persons can still have long-term health issues stemming from the virus.

Over the past five week, El Paso has recorded more than 8,600 additional cases in the past five weeks, double the total number of cases reported during the proceeding 3 1/2 months of the pandemic. 

Hospitalizations held at 310 on Sunday morning, but the number of patients in intensive care grew by 11 to reach 108. Those on ventilators were listed at 44, a drop of five patients from the prior day.

As ABC-7 reported, state data as of Saturday afternoon reflected there were only eight total ICU beds available in El Paso area hospitals; that number reflects the total ICU bed count, not just those utilized for Covid-19 patients. 

El Paso County's rolling 7-day positivity rate was at 10.62 percent as of Sunday, with officials indicating that 1 in 5 people who test positive showed no symptoms of being infected.

El Pasoans in their 20s and 30s comprised nearly 40 percent of all new cases in the past week, the data shows, while those over 70 made up 12 percent. Bob Moore at El Paso Matters observes that infections in El Pasoans under 50 have more than tripled in the past five weeks.

Community spread and close contact with someone already infected continue to make up the bulk of newly reported cases, according to health department data.

Moore's calculations show that zip codes 79927, 79928 and 79938 have the top per-capita infection rates in the county. Some of that, he indicated, is due to county and state jails, while higher proportions of people in their 20s and 30s also are a contributing factor.