After two days when the Department of Public Health added only three confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Northeast Health District, the Daily Status Report on Wednesday added 68 new cases, the largest number ever added in a single day in the region.
The second largest number added in the 10-county Northeast Health District was a week ago, underscoring the seemingly erratic but patterned nature of reporting of cases to the Department of Public Health.
The seven-day rolling average of added cases, which smooths out some of the differential reporting across days of the week, increased from 15.1 on Tuesday to 17.6 cases per day on Wednesday.
Most of the added cases on Wednesday–54–were in Barrow County, which added 24 cases a week ago when the whole district had 51 new cases, but Walton County added six cases, Elbert County added four and Clarke County added two.
Oconee County did not add any new cases, and the number of cases in the county in the Daily Status Report, 66, has remained the same for six days.
Oconee County Sheriff Scott Berry on Wednesday reported no new Active COVID-19 Cases, based on the information provided to him by the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, and the total number of Active Cases in Oconee County stands at 20.
The Northeast Health District added one death on Wednesday, of an 86-year-old male with existing conditions in Barrow County. The cumulative number of deaths in the District attributed to COVID-19 is 40.
The Department of Public Health Long-Term Care Facilities Report released Tuesday afternoon reported no new deaths in the Northeast Health District’s nursing and personal care homes since release of the report on Monday.
The report also listed no new cases among either patients or staff at the Northeast Health District long-term care facilities.
State Data
Across the state, the Daily Status Report on Wednesday added 697 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, and the seven-day rolling average decreased from 725.0 on Tuesday to 681.4 on Wednesday. Testing also increased on Wednesday, as it has in recent weeks.
The Daily Status Report at 1:25 p.m. on Wednesday listed 44 new deaths, bringing the state total to 1,505. The seven-day rolling average of deaths dropped from 29.6 on Tuesday to 28.6 on Wednesday.
All 44 of those added deaths occurred in the last 14 days–the period the Department of Public Health is labeling as one for which data are incomplete. The Daily Status report on Tuesday listed 252 deaths in the last 14 days, compared with 261 in the last 14 days on Wednesday.
The Georgia Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday evening reported that 884 of the 2,840 ventilators in hospitals in the state are in use, up from 871 in use the day before. (This is a correction from an earlier statement incorrectly saying these were regional data. I apologize for the error.)
These are the only two data points on ventilator use released so far by GEMA, which also reported in its Situation Report COVID-19 on Tuesday evening that the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state has dropped by 11 from the day before.
The data available for the region and the state continue to show a mixed picture regarding the progression of COVID-19 in the region and in the state.
The seven-day rolling average of number of added deaths each day, which should not be affected by testing, is down from its peak in the third week of April, but it remains high and it is not clear that it is continuing to decline.
Discrepancies In Reports
Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday, without saying so directly, weighed in on the question of the completeness of the data in the Daily Status Report.
Discrepancies exist between the data in the Daily Status Report and in the Long-Term Care Facility Report, both of which are produced by the Department of Public Health but use different collection methodologies.
As one example, Oconee County has had no deaths attributed to COVID-19, according to the Daily Status Report, but it has had two deaths at the High Shoals Health and Rehabilitation nursing home in North High Shoals, according to the Long-Term Care Facility Report.
"Right now, nursing home, assisted living, and personal care home residents and staff make up 18.5% of our total positive cases,” Kemp said in a news release. Kemp then said that “49% of total deaths involve nursing home, assisted living, and personal care home residents.”
As of Tuesday, when Kemp issued his statement, the Daily Status Report had 34,635 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
The Long-Term Care Facilities Report for Georgia on Tuesday listed 4,504 residents with COVID-19 and 1,932 staff with COVID-19, or a total of 6,436 cases. That 6,436 is 18.5 percent of the total of 34,635 cases from the Daily Status Report. That is the figure Gov. Kemp used.
The Daily Status Report on Tuesday listed 1,461 deaths from COVID-19 in the state.
The Long-Term Care Report for Tuesday for Georgia listed 727 deaths at long-term care facilities. If all of those 727 deaths are counted in the 1,461 deaths listed in the Daily Status Report, the percent is 49.8. Kemp used 49 percent.
Barrow Data
The large increase in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Barrow County does not appear to be the result of spread of the disease in nursing homes in the county, if the data in the Long-Term Care Facility Report are correct.
Winder Health Care and Rehabilitation Center added one death in the Long-Term Care Facility Report from May 8 to May 11, but it added no new COVID-19 positive residents and no new COVID-19 positive staff.
Winder Health Care and Rehabilitation also added no new deaths, no new positive residents, and no new positive staff from May 11 to May 12.
Mulberry Grove in Statham, which reported one staff member with COVID on May 8 and no other COVID cases, reported the same on May 11.
Mulberry Grove in Statham also added no deaths, resident cases or staff cases from May 11 to May 12.
Charts
The three charts below have been updated to reflect data from the 1:25 p.m. Daily Status Report for Wednesday.
The first chart includes data for the Northeast Health District, and Charts 2 and 3 include data for the state of Georgia.
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| Chart 1 (Click To Enlarge) |
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| Chart 1 (Click To Enlarge) |
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| Chart 1 (Click To Enlarge) |
1 comment:
Thank you for your careful reporting. Did you see the multiple group photos of Oconee safety employees being fed by Prince Ave Baptist Church where almost nobody had on a mask?
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