36 more El Pasoans have virus, county now close to 2,400 cases

EL PASO, Texas -- Public health officials announced Monday morning that another 36 El Pasoans were infected with Covid-19, but no new deaths have been reported since Friday with the death count holding at 58.

This daily increase in cases is comparatively low to what El Paso saw last week. The county had three days in a row with triple-digit increases. There were more than a 100 cases each day, but that streak ended on Sunday.

However, Mondays have typically been when the fewest new cases are reported. The numbers generally reflect an increase starting on Tuesday.

Monday's new infections brought the total number of cases in El Paso to 2,376. The Department of Public Health also announced another 30 people recovered, which means there were 1,051 active cases in the county.

As has been the case over the past couple of weeks, the number of new daily cases remained greater than the number of new recoveries, which some attribute to increased testing capacity.

Hospitalizations, a key figure being monitored by local and state leaders, jumped by 13 patients on Monday to 112, and those listed in intensive care grew by five to 66.

Those needing ventilators dropped slightly to 18 from 20, which could be a sign of death announcements to come as medical experts have said few people recover from the virus after going on ventilators; the health department's fatality data typically lags in order for officials to conduct an epidemiological death investigation.

For the first time, officials had released information Sunday about clusters of infections and the sources of exposure to the virus. The information came in response to a formal request made by ABC-7 seeking to obtain "cluster" data.

While health officials have declined to identify specific facilities, ABC-7 and El Paso Matters reported Sunday that a surge in Covid-19 cases in west-central El Paso’s 79902 Zip code appears it could be clustered at the Mountain View Health and Rehabilitation nursing facility at 1600 Murchison.

You can see that cluster data below, and additional health department case and demographic information can be found here.