Northeast Health District And State See Record Number Of New COVID-19 Cases On Saturday

***State Adds 10 Deaths But Eliminates Four***

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 Department of Public Health reported the addition of 42 new cases in the 10-county Northeast Health District, and the seven-day rolling average of added cases was 41.7, the highest average number ever recorded.

A simple plotting of the trends for the state and for the 10-county District shows them moving in tandem at present, though at points in the past they have not. Patterns in the 10 counties can easily be masked by what is happening in the remaining 149 counties in the state.

On Saturday, all but three of the counties in the Northeast Health District added cases. Oconee County added five cases, and Clarke County added 18 cases. Clarke County has added 100 cases in the last six days.

In the last 21 days, Clarke County has added 163 cases, while Oconee County has added 23.

These would be considered to be active cases if the virus were detected on the day it was reported, which is unlikely. Information on date of onset of the disease is not released as part of the public data file.

Oconee County Sheriff Scott Berry posted on his Facebook page on Friday that Oconee County had active cases at 14 addresses in the county, based on data provided him by the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

Berry had reported earlier that one of those addresses was for a nursing home with multiple cases present.

Deaths Reported

The Department of Public Health listed six additional deaths in its Saturday Daily Status Report, none of them in the Northeast Health District.

But the Department of Public Health also eliminated four cases from its archive of deaths, my analysis of those records shows, so the actual number of newly recorded deaths was 10, rather than six.

Eight of the deaths the Department of Public Health added occurred in the last 14 days, according to the released records.

The Department of Public Health routinely eliminates deaths from its files, though it never offers any explanation. Across the last week, the Department of Health has eliminated 15 deaths from its records.

The seven-day rolling average of increased deaths (rather than true added deaths) attributed to COVID-19 remained static on Saturday for the whole state at 19.1 and for the 10-county Northeast Health District at 0.9.

The Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) reported on Saturday that the number of Confirmed COVID-19 Hospitalizations declined by six, the first day in which there has not been an increase in this statistic since June 14.

GEMA reported that the number of Critical Care Beds in use in hospitals in the Northeast Health District increased by two with the issuance of the Saturday Situation Report COVID-19.

The Department of Community Health has issued a Long-Term Care Facility Report on every Friday going back to May 29, but it did not issue one yesterday and did not release one on Saturday.

Charts

All three charts below are based on data from the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report and were updated with the 2:50 p.m. release of the Report on Saturday.

Charts 1 and 2 are dual axis charts showing seven-day rolling averages for the state of Georgia as a whole and for the 10-county Northeast Health District.

The data for the state are plotted on the left-hand vertical axis, and the data for the Northeast Health District are plotted on the right-hand vertical axis.

Chart 3 shows cumulative data on cases for Oconee County and for Clarke County.

Chart 1 (Click To Enlarge)

Chart 2 (Click To Enlarge)

Chart 3 (Click To Enlarge)