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VERIFY: Facebook post claims 'small portion' of population has been affected by COVID-19

Someone sent KVUE a Facebook message asking us to verify the information in the post.

AUSTIN, Texas — In a week when Texas surpassed 10,000 COVID-19 deaths and 550,000 cumulative cases, someone sent KVUE a Facebook post they came across asking us to verify the COVID-related claims it made.

The post included graphs for Texas, Travis County and Bastrop County comparing the population of each to COVID-19 cases, recoveries, active cases and deaths. The post says the graphs "show how small a portion of the total population has even been affected."

Warning: The original Facebook post contains language to describe COVID-19 that some might find offensive, echoing the term President Donald Trump has used in reference to the virus.

To verify this post, we used data from the Texas Department of State Health Services COVID-19 dashboard, the Austin Public Health COVID-19 dashboard, and population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

That data in the post, and the way it's presented, generally check out.

For the state of Texas, the most recent census estimates put the population at around 29 million, and the DSHS count (as of Aug. 19) lists 557,256 COVID-19 cases and 10,559 deaths.

Credit: KVUE News

When plotted against the population, cases are represented by only a small sliver of a bar, and deaths are barely visible.

The graphs are similar for Travis County (population: 1.27 million, 25,062 cases, 346 deaths) and Bastrop County (population: 88,723, 1,477 cases, 24 deaths).

Credit: KVUE News
Credit: KVUE News

Put another way, Texas (as of Aug. 19) has had 19.22 cases per 1,000 population and one death per 2,778 population. Of Texans who have been confirmed to have contracted the virus, 1.89% have died, a figure known as the case-fatality rate.

Travis County has had 19.67 cases per 1,000 population and 1 death per 3,846 population. The case-fatality rate for Travis County is 1.38%.

Bastrop County has had 16.65 cases per 1,000 population and 1 death per 3,704 population. For Bastrop County, the case-fatality rate is 1.62%.

While the numbers seem small, COVID-19 is still a leading cause of death for Texans. Compared to the most recent CDC data available (2018), the virus would rank as the 6th-leading cause of death for Texans. Texas' 10,559 COVID-19 deaths date back to March 15, 2020, meaning in five months, the virus has already surpassed an entire year's worth of deaths from causes such as Alzheimer's, diabetes, liver disease, suicide, influenza and pneumonia, and assault (homicide).

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