Axios on Monday corrected a story that claimed the COVID-19 death rate in Texas reached a high not seen since March 2020.
Axios claimed that “the state’s seven-day coronavirus death rate reached its highest levels since March 2020.”
The outlet later updated the piece and added a correction.
A post on Twitter promoting the false information remains up. Axios appended another tweet to it, alerting followers to the correction.
It’s the second time in recent days that a news outlet has had to correct false information about the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas.
The Texas Tribune claimed last week that over 5,800 children were hospitalized in the state in a single week in August.
The Axios story was about how Texas Department of State Health Services have asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for five mortuary trailers as officials fear they may need them to deal with a recent increase in COVID-19 deaths.
A chart from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that deaths are increasing recently, though they remain nowhere near the previous peak in January or the initial peak in July 2020.
The seven-day average death rate climbed to 89 on Aug. 15. The number hit 351 on Jan. 14 and 260 last July.
Still, deaths could keep climbing, because the number of new patients being admitted to hospitals with confirmed COVID-19 cases has jumped in Texas—and a number of other states, including California—in recent weeks.
Just 193 new patients on average were being admitted with COVID-19 as of June 26. Over 1,500 were being admitted on average as of Aug. 12, though that number dropped about 3 percent in the most recent week.
