HOUSTON — You've heard about the rise in coronavirus cases. Case counts are going up. Hospitalizations are on the rise, and things could get worse after the Thanksgiving holidays.
On Wednesday, the state of Texas broke a record for the number of COVID-19 cases reported with 14,648. That broke the record set on Monday of 13,998 cases. There were also 240 new deaths and 90 additional hospitalizations.
With Wednesday's numbers, the state of Texas has now had 1,130,980 cases of COVID-19 and 21,950 deaths.
Locally, Harris County outside of Houston reported 679 new cases and three new deaths. That increased the county's numbers to 91,449 confirmed cases and 990 deaths. It's important to note that Harris County outside of Houston has also reported 80,450 recoveries.
As for inside the city of Houston, there were 1,288 new cases reported on Wednesday, bringing the city's total to 95,714. There were two new deaths in the city, bringing that number to 1,423.
Of the 1,288 cases reported in Houston Wednesday, 96 percent were tested within the past 14 days. Ninety-five cases were identified as duplicates and removed from the total count.
Tracking COVID-19 cases across Texas
The state of Texas is keeping an interactive map online showing county-by-county case counts, deaths and hospitalizations. You can access that map from the Texas health department here.
Vaccine help on the way
Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca are all close to being able to offer vaccines, some as early as December. But who gets a vaccine first when it's available? We know healthcare workers who are dealing directly with COVID-19 patients and first responders will be among the first. Here are the other criteria the state is looking at when deciding who will be immunized first.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect number of deaths attributed to Texas. This has been corrected.