DSHS NO LONGER REPORTING ACTIVE, RECOVERED CASE ESTIMATES ON COVID-19 DASHBOARD

  

The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) is no longer sharing estimates of active and recovered COVID-19 cases.

The state’s COVID-19 dashboard was changed last week, and now only shows confirmed cases, probable cases and fatalities.

DSHS Senior Press Officer Lara Anton said the adjustments were made because with changes in the virus, the proportion of people who require hospitalization and the length of time it takes patients to resolve their symptoms has changed.  Therefore, the resulting calculations for active and recovered cases “would no longer be accurate.”

Anton also said a complete resolution of symptoms is no longer necessary for a person to be considered non-contagious.  In addition, she said recovery estimates are less meaningful in an environment where people may have gotten infected and recovered multiple times or may have recovered from one infection but not a second.

The changes to the dashboard come after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its recommended quarantine timeline.  The CDC says COVID-19 patients should isolate for five days, and if they are asymptomatic or their symptoms are resolving, follow that with five days of wearing a mask.

In moving to providing annual COVID-19 data, Anton said there is “no straightforward way” to assign active and recovered estimates to a year.  She added there are no longer any state executive orders that rely on active or recovered cases.

Anton said these changes in how new cases are reported mean they will show up on the dashboard more quickly.

Daily new case counts for each county can be found at https://dshs.texas.gov.