The Northeast Health District reported a record number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the 10-county Northeast Health District with the release of the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report on Tuesday.
Led by Clarke County’s increase of 41 cases, the 10-county Northeast Health District added 128 new cases, and the seven-day rolling average of added cases jumped to 54.0 from 42.9 on Monday.
Oconee County is willing to modify its plans for the parent entrance to Malcom Bridge Middle School, but that will be possible only if citizens put pressure on the Board of Education to consider alternatives, Oconee County Board of Commissioners Chair John Daniell said last week.
Daniell said the proposed modified R-Cut design is good but not the best option, and the originally proposed roundabout, rejected by the Board of Education, is better.
The state added 2,207 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 with Monday’s release of the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report, the second largest number of new cases ever added.
The 10-county Northeast Health District added 28 cases, including two in Oconee County and five in Clarke County.
The number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases continued to soar on Sunday, with the state and the 10-county Northeast Health District setting new records.
Across the state, 2,225 new cases were recorded in the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report, the first time that the number of cases has increased by more than 2,000 in a 24-hour period.
The 10-county Northeast Health District, which includes Oconee and Clarke counties, and the state of Georgia as a whole, set new records on Saturday in number of added confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Across the state, the Department of Public Health reported 1,990 new cases of COVID-19, the highest number ever, and the seven-day rolling average of added cases jumped to 1,596.6, the highest average ever.
The spread of COVID-19 in the state entered entirely new territory on Friday with the Department of Public Health reporting 1,900 new confirmed cases, the highest level ever reported.
The Daily Status Report listed 1,800 new cases on Saturday of last week, the previous high record, and the seven-day rolling average of added cases was 1,569.4 on Friday, the highest rolling average ever.
The state of Georgia added 1,714 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Daily Status Report of the Department of Public Health on Thursday, the third day in a row in which more than 1,700 new cases were added.
The seven-day rolling average of added cases in the state is 1,454.7, which far exceeds the seven-day rolling average of 857.3 on April 13, the earlier high point after which cases began to decline.
Oconee County’s two state representatives, Houston Gaines and Marcus Wiedower, reversed course on Tuesday and voted with the majority in approving a modified version of House Bill 426, referred to as a Hate Crimes Bill.
Both Gaines and Wiedower had voted against the original version of the bill when it narrowly passed the Georgia House of Representatives in March of last year.
The seven-day rolling average of added confirmed COVID-19 cases increased both in the Northeast Health District and across the state with the release of the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report on Wednesday.
The Northeast Health District added 58 new cases, including 11 cases in Clarke County and two in Oconee County, and the seven-day rolling average increased to 31.4 cases per day from 27.7 on Tuesday.
The Watkinsville Council last week unanimously approved a concept plan for a Miracle League Field and new playground in Harris Shoals Park behind the Extra Special People two-building complex on VFW Drive.
The Council instructed the city staff and attorney to work out an operating agreement between ESP and the city to be considered and approved at a later date.
The seven-day rolling average of added COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths attributed to the disease increased on Tuesday both in the 10-county Northeast Health District that includes Oconee and Clarke counties and in the state overall.
In the 24 long-term care facilities in the Northeast Health District with COVID-19 contamination, the number of deaths and the number of residents with COVID-19 increased, as did the number of staff with the disease.
Two citizens used the opportunity of a Budget Hearing of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners last week to raise concerns that have budget implications but that were not directed as specifics of the budget presented.
County Finance Director provided the commissioners and the public the final details of the $53.3 million budget which includes no new positions, no salary raises for existing employees, and increased spending on health insurance benefits.
Athens attorney Deborah Gonzalez said last week she is ready to seek election as district attorney in November pending the outcome on her suit against Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to force the state to hold that election.
Gonzalez told Oconee County Democrats, meeting virtually last Thursday evening, that U.S. District Court Judge Mark Cohen in Atlanta has scheduled a hearing on her motion for a preliminary injunction against Kemp and Raffensperger for 10 a.m. on this coming Thursday via Zoom.
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases increased again on Monday, both in the state as a whole and in the 10-county Northeast Health District.
The state added 1,227 new confirmed cases of the disease in the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report on Monday, and the 10-county Northeast Health District contributed 26 of those cases.
Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler told Oconee County Republicans that three things distinguish her from the Democrats and Republicans who will be seeking her seat in the non-primaried special election on Nov. 3.
Loeffler said she is a business outsider, a life-long conservative, and someone who already has Senate experience.
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continued to climb on Sunday in the state of Georgia as a whole and in the 10-county Northeast Health District.
The state added 892 new cases of COVID-19, and the 10-county Northeast Health District added 14.
On the day that the Georgia Department of Public Health reported the largest number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 ever, the Northeast Health District reported only 10 new confirmed cases.
Those new cases were spread throughout the 10-county Northeast Health District, with Oconee County adding one case and Clarke County adding two.
The rescanning of Oconee County’s 7,422 Absentee Ballots on Wednesday did not have any impact on the outcome of the county’s elections on June 9, but it did result in the votes of four of the county’s residents being counted that were missed in the first scan.
The rescan had been agreed upon by the county Board of Elections and Registration on Tuesday because the scanner appeared to be not counting some of the Absentee Ballots that had been marked.
Reflecting the broader trends across the state of Georgia, the 10-county Northeast Health District added 39 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Friday, listed three new deaths attributed to the disease, and reported the highest number of Critical Care Beds in use in more than two weeks.
Only Oconee County among the the 10 counties in the Department of Public Health Northeast Health District did not add at least one case in the Friday Daily Status Report, released at 2:50 p.m. on Friday.
The state of Georgia added 882 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Thursday Department of Public Health Daily Status Report, and that included 23 cases in the 10-county Northeast Health District.
For the state and the region, the number of newly identified cases was lower than the number added on Thursday of last week, and the seven-day rolling average of added cases dropped from 864.3 on Wednesday to 848.4 on Thursday at the state level and from 22.4 to 20.7 at the local level.
The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration on Tuesday voted unanimously to toss out the initial scanning of the 7,424 absentee ballots cast in the June 9 election and to rescan those ballots before the county’s election results are certified on Friday.
The Board took the action on the recommendation of Fran Leathers, who is chair of the Board and director of Elections and Registration for the county.
The seven-day rolling average of added COVID-19 cases and deaths increased in the 10-county Northeast Health District of the Department of Public Health and in the state of Georgia as whole with the release of the Daily Status Report on Wednesday.
The 10-county Northeast Health district added 32 new cases, with Oconee, Clarke and six of the other counties adding cases. The seven-day rolling average of added cases increased from 20.6 on Tuesday to 22.4 on Wednesday.
The 10-county Northeast Health District added 25 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, the same number added a week ago, and the seven-day rolling average of added cases per day remained unchanged at 20.6.
Only two counties–Oconee and Greene–did not add a new case, and the total number of confirmed cases in the District over the three-month run of the pandemic is 1,840.
While Georgia continued to show growth in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths on Monday, the 10-county Northeast Health District–which includes Oconee and Clarke Counties–witnessed a slight drop in averge number of cases and a consistent level of COVID-19 deaths.
The 10-county district added 23 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, but that number was down from the 33 added a week ago, and the seven-day rolling average of added cases dropped to 20.6 on Monday from 22.0 on Sunday.
The Northeast Health District added only a single confirmed case of COVID-19 in the Sunday Department of Public Health Daily Status Report–in Clarke County–and the seven-day rolling average of added cases dropped from 23.1 on Saturday to 22.0 on Sunday.
The 10-county Northeast Health District did not report any new COVID-19 deaths on Sunday, but the seven-day rolling average of added deaths remained unchanged at 1.7 from Saturday because no deaths were added on Sunday a week earlier.
Sen. Bill Cowsert, who represents Oconee, Clarke and Walton counties in the Georgia General Assembly, said he thinks the Senate is likely to pass a hate crimes bill after it comes back into session on Monday, but it will not be the bill passed by the Georgia House of Representatives last year.
Cowsert said he supports passage of a bill, and he thinks the bill that the Senate will produce “will be much more comprehensive” than the House Bill now before the Senate for consideration.
At the Board of Commissioners meeting last week, Chair John Daniell announced that the next Town Hall Meeting will be June 23, possibly at Malcom Bridge Middle School, where there will be a chance to discuss ongoing and proposed road improvements at the school complex.
At the end of the week, however, Daniell said in an email message that “We are still finalizing the details of the Town Hall scheduled for June 23rd. We hope to have everything nailed down next week.”
The seven-day rolling averages of added confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths attributed to the disease increased both in the state of Georgia as a whole and in the 10-county Northeast Health District with the release of the Daily Status Report on Saturday.
The increases at the state level were quite dramatic, as the state added 1,018 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 28 deaths.
Three COVID-19 deaths listed in Friday’s Daily Status Report of the Department of Public Health pushed up the seven-day rolling average of deaths in the 10-county Northeast Health District, consistent with the statewide trend of increasing deaths from the disease.
The Northeast Health District added 24 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Friday, but that was much lower than the 59 new cased added a week ago, and the seven-day rolling average of added cases dropped from 27.0 per day on Thursday to 22.0 per day on Friday.
Just less than half–48.3 percent–of Oconee County’s Active Registered Voters cast a ballot in the merged Presidential Primary, Party Primary, and Non-Partisan Judicial election on Tuesday.
That compares with a turnout of 53.7 in the Presidential Primary in March of 2016 and with the turnout of 30.81 in the May 2016 Party Primary and Non-Partisan election.
Even as the state of Georgia saw continuing increases on Thursday in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, in the 10-county Northeast Health District the average number of new cases remained the same as the day before and the average number of new deaths was down just slightly.
The Northeast Health District did add 35 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Thursday Daily Status Report of the Department of Public Health, up from 19 the day before.
The 10-county Northeast Health District added 19 new confirmed COVID-19 cases and one death attributed to the disease in the Wednesday Daily Status Report of the Department of Public Health.
The figures resulted in slight drops in the seven-day averages of added cases (from 27.0 from 27.3) and deaths (from 2.0 to 1.6).Voters in the Oconee County Republican Primary on Tuesday selected three incumbents in Board of Commissioners races, a newcomer to the county in the Board of Education race, and a current Captain in the Sheriff’s Office to be the new Sheriff.
Voters in the nonpartisan election for Probate Court Judge chose Mike Hunsinger to succeed retiring Judge David Anglin.
The Department of Public Health on Tuesday added five deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the 10-county Northeast Health District and 25 new confirmed cases of the disease.
The large number of new cases increased the seven-day rolling average of added cases per day in the Northeast Health District to 27.3, up from 26.3 on Monday.
The seven-day rolling average of new cases of COVID-19 in the 10-county Northeast Health District increased on Monday with the addition of 33 new confirmed cases of the disease.
Only Morgan and Madison counties did not add cases in the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report released at 3 p.m. on Monday.
Consistent with the pattern from recent weeks, the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report on Sunday listed only nine new cases of COVID-19 in the Northeast Health District, and the report included no new deaths attributable to the disease in the District.
The seven-day rolling average of added cases in the District did increase–from 23.1 on Saturday to 24.1 on Sunday–because the nine new cases in the Sunday report compared with the two new cases reported Sunday a week ago.
Lacking opposition in the party primary on Tuesday, the five local Democratic candidates speaking at the party meeting last month focused not on this week’s election but on the election on November 3.
Jonathan Wallace, seeking election to the Georgia House of Representatives, said he was motivated to run because of redistricting.
The Georgia Department of Public Health issued a Daily Status Report at 3 p.m. on Saturday eliminating 21 deaths from its cumulative list of deaths attributed to COVID-19.
The result, according to the report, was a drop in the number of deaths in the state from the disease from 2,174 to 2,160 on Saturday.
More than a quarter of Oconee County’s registered voters already has cast a ballot, either in person or by absentee, during the just-completed three weeks of early voting for the June 9 election.
The Tuesday election is a merger of the postponed March 24 presidential primary as well as of the party primaries and nonpartisan elections originally scheduled for May 19, and just less than 70 percent of Oconee County voters have used a Republican ballot in voting so far.
Both the Northeast Health District and the state as a whole reported large increases in confirmed cases of COVID-19 and increases in deaths attributed to the disease in the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report for Friday.
The seven-day rolling average of added cases of COVID-19 and added deaths attributed to COVID-19 increased both in the 10-county Northeast Health District of the Department of Public Health and across the whole of Georgia.
The 10-county Northeast Health District of the Georgia Department of Public Health added two deaths attributed to COVID-19 and 35 new confirmed cases of the disease in the Daily Status Report released at 3 p.m. on Thursday.
The new deaths–in Clarke and Barrow counties–moved the seven-day rolling average of added deaths up from 2.3 deaths per day on Wednesday to 2.4 deaths per day on Thursday.
Oconee County added a ninth death attributed to COVID-19 in the Wednesday Daily Status Report of the Georgia Department of Public Health, and Walton County added three deaths, bringing the total number of deaths attributed to the disease in the Northeast Health District to 77.
The 10-county Northeast Health District has added 16 COVID-19 deaths in the last week, and the seven-day rolling average of added deaths attributed to the disease in the District stood at 2.3 at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, the same as the day before.
Oconee County School Superintendent Jason Branch told the Board of Education at its meeting on Monday that he and his staff are reviewing the guidelines from the Georgia Department of Public Education and the Georgia Department of Public Health to determine how schools will reopen in the fall.
The two state departments had released earlier in the day guidelines for school systems regarding the reopening of schools following their closure this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Northeast Health District added seven deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the Daily Status Report of the Department of Public Health on Tuesday, with Oconee County and Clarke County each accounting for one of the deaths.
The addition of seven deaths was the largest ever recorded for the 10-county Northeast Health District in a single day, and the seven-day rolling average of added cases increased to 2.3 on Tuesday from 1.4 on Monday.
Oconee and Oglethorpe counties each added a death attributed to COVID-19 in the Monday Daily Status Report issued by the Georgia Department of Health, bringing the total number of reported deaths from the disease in each of the counties to seven.
Oconee County’s death was of a female, described as 90 plus years of age and with chronic conditions, while the Oglethorpe death was of a 70-year-old male without known chronic conditions.
