Health Care Worker Is Tarrant County's 6th Confirmed COVID-19 Case
TARRANT COUNTY (CBSDFW.COM) - Tarrant County's sixth confirmed case of COVID-19 is a health care worker, who had been working with sick patients, according to the county public health director.
It's not clear exactly how the infected person contracted the virus, leading Director of Tarrant County Public Health Vinny Taneja to call Tuesday a "significant" day related to the spread of the illness. However, Taneja referred to it as a case of local transmission, and still a step away from generalized community spread.
Taneja revealed the details in an update to Tarrant County commissioners in their regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday.
While the development prompted county Judge Glen Whitely to urge residents to limit their contacts socially, commissioners did not take action to expand occupancy limits that went into effect earlier Tuesday.
Those limits, announced by the city of Fort Worth, cut occupancy in most businesses to 50%, or no more than 125.
Cities including Dallas, Austin and Houston have gone a step further, ordering closures of gyms, theater and bars.
Whitely said he wanted to consult first with mayors and school districts in the county before taking restrictions to that point.
"We just need to work together, and we don't work together by me dictating, without talking to them," he said. "And quite honestly, I don't have that authority."
Taneja also said Tuesday the county was running short of control samples of the virus from federal sources, needed for testing. While it is likely, Taneja said, that private labs had done thousands of tests in the county, the public lab was limiting its tests to textbook definition cases because of the short supplies.
The county also extended a disaster declaration another 90 days, out to mid-June.
