Labor Day will be the fourth major holiday since the COVID-19 virus shut down most of the country in mid-March.
Health officials are asking people to not let this weekend be a repeat of some of the previous holiday weekends that caused a spike in cases. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins echoed this while discussing the county's change from the red risk level to the orange risk level.
"We've had two events here in Dallas County that have shot up COVID-19: Easter Passover and Memorial Day," Jenkins said.
When looking at the four biggest North Texas counties, the daily COVID-19 case count shows some trends around these two holidays.
Looking at the daily cases in Dallas County up to Easter on April 12, Dallas County had a record-high of 107 cases on April 11. On May 3, the county broke 200 daily cases with 234 and started to see a steady rise in cases after that.
Dr. Philip Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, said this was the first real rise in cases the county saw.
"Definitely saw those impacts," Huang said. "You could see, as people started moving more and going out more. That was before more of the mask usage."
Memorial Day was the holiday that caused the biggest spike.
By May 25, Dallas County had remained steady in the high 100s and low 200s in terms of new cases, and Tarrant County was in a stretch of eight straight days below 100 new cases.
A couple of weeks later, Dallas was consistently in the 300s and 400s while Tarrant County only had one day with less than 100 cases from June 10 through the rest of the month.
Tarrant County Judge B. Glen Whitley message for people right now is "don't let up."
"On the holidays, people are used to getting together," Whitley said. "There's just that natural tendency to let up and relax a little bit. And we just have to stay the course."
July 4th came a couple of days after a state-mandated mask order.
While all four counties were still seeing record highs weeks after the holiday, they all started to plateau.
On July 4, Dallas County was in the middle of an 18-day stretch of 1,000 or more new cases every day. However, from July 21 through the end of the month, the county only hit that mark once.
"Since then is when we've seen the decline that allowed us now to move from red to orange," Huang said. "We can not have another Memorial Day weekend over Labor Day weekend. Otherwise, it will be catastrophic again and we'll see a big increase."
Huang said people need to stick to the three Ws moving forward: wear a mask, wash your hands and watch your distance.
"Everyone has cabin fever and wants to get back to normal," Huang said. "We have to recognize this is a new normal and we're going to have to keep doing these things."