HOUSTON — Texas reported 2,713 new COVID-19 cases Monday. It's the lowest one day total in two months. It's a positive sign, but unfortunately, deaths continue to climb.
Texas became the fourth state to pass the 10,000-death mark with 10,034. That's nearly the equivalent of wiping out entire Houston area suburbs like Jacinto City and Galena Park.
Texas reported nearly 1,000 deaths in the last five days. When you zero in on Houston, we found similar disturbing trends. Houston reported 10 new deaths Monday. So far in August, Houston has reported 189 deaths. Houston is on track to break its July record of 226 deaths.
A silver lining of goods news is a declining statewide positivity rate. It's now at 11.87%. It's the lowest it has been since the beginning of August. That positivity rate was more than 24% last week. DSHS officials blame the spike on coding errors and a system upgrade.
Houston's Health Department did not report an updated positivity rate today. We're told they're still processing data after a large data dump from the state. Houston hopes to be below 5% by Sept. 1.