The Northeast Health District added 162 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Saturday, and the seven-day rolling average of added cases held steady at 133.9
The Department of Public Health reported no new deaths in the 10-county Northeast Health District, and the seven day rolling average of added deaths dropped to 0.9.
The Department of Community Affairs, in its Long-Term Care Facility Report released late on Friday evening, removed the COVID-19 death reported on Thursday at St. Gabriel of Athens personal care home, 2040 Resurgence Drive off Virgil Langford Road in Oconee County.
The Georgia Emergency Management Agency reported a sharp rebound in the number of Critical Care Beds available at area hospitals, to 11 out of 70 possible. That number had been zero on Friday.
The 162 new COVID-19 cases added in the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report were spread across the 10-county Northest Health District, with every county except Oglethorpe adding cases.
Oconee County added 12 cases, and Clarke County added 43.
The Department of Community Affairs listed two additional COVID-19 Positive Staff at the 30 long-term care facilities in the 10-county Northeast Health District on its list, both at University Nursing and Rehab Center on Epps Bridge Road in Athens-Clarke County.
That facility now has reported 12 COVID Positive Staff and 12 COVID Positive Residents, but no COVID-19 deaths. At present, the facility is listed as having 94 residents.
State Data
Across the state, the Department of Public Health listed 3,787 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Daily Status Report on Saturday.
The seven-day rolling average of added cases declined from 3,745.4 on Friday to 3,616.6 on Saturday.
The state added 53 new deaths, and the seven-day rolling average of added deaths increased from 44.3 on Friday to 46.7 on Saturday.
Forty-two of those 53 deaths were in the last 14 days, and the seven-day rolling average of deaths dated by time of occurrence rather than by date of reporting increased on Saturday, as it has the last four days.
The Department of Community Health, in its Long-Term Care Facility Report issued late on Friday, listed 591 facilities with COVID-19 cases among their residents and/or staff.
The state has 790 nursing homes, personal care homes, and assisted living communities with 25 or more beds covered by the Long-Term Care Facility Report.
The Georgia Emergency Management Agency reported 3,094 Current Confirmed COVID-19 Hospitalizations in its Saturday Report. The number has dropped in each of the last three days.
The Agency reported 1,253 ventilators in use, down by one from the day before.
St. Mary’s And Femi Care
Day-to-day changes in the listings of facilities in the Northeast Health District in the Department of Community Health Long-Term Care Facility Report have been common in recent weeks.
On July 8 St. Mary’s Highland Hills Village, 1660 Jennings Mill Road, just at the Oconee County border with Clarke County at McNutt Creek, appeared on the Long-Term Care Facility report with four staff members with COVID-19.
On July 9, St. Mary’s was off the list.
On July 8, The Femi Care Southern Pines Living Center in Jackson County showed up on the list with three staff members with COVID-19.
On July 14, The Femi Care Southern Pines was off the list.
On July 17 and in many reports prior to that, The Pearl At Loganville in Walton County was on the list with 18 COVID-19 cases among its 27 residents. It also reported four resident deaths from COVID-19.
On July 20, The Pearl was no longer on the list. It reappeared, however, on July 22, with the 19 cases among its residents and the four resident deaths.
St. Mary’s had appeared and disappeared from the list once before.
On May 7, Long-Term Care Facility Report listed St. Mary’s Highland Hill Village in Oconee in Oconee County with one COVID-19 Positive Staff member.
On May 8, St. Mary’s was not on the list.
Report Production
With the help of Rep. Houson Gaines from the 117th District of the Georgia House of Representatives, my district, I was able to speak by phone with Charles Strong, director of Communications for the Department of Community Health, on Friday afternoon.
Strong confirmed that the list is meant to be cumulative, meaning that once a long-term care facility is on the list, it should not be removed.
He also said that the facilities themselves report the data electronically and that the data are not verified because of a lack of staff to do that work.
Until July 5, the Department of Community Health produced the report, he said, and each day staff members called the 790 long-term care facilities in the state with at least 25 beds to get them to file data if COVID-19 was present among their residents and/or staff.
Since July 6, the Department of Public Health has taken over responsibility for the reports, but that agency also does not verify the information provided by the facilities themselves, Strong said.
Explanation Offered
Strong said the only explanation he could offer for St. Mary’s and Femi Care filing a reporting listing COVID-19 among the staff and then not filing subsequent reports was “human error” in filing the initial report.
It is possible that the facility had a false positive for the staff and then did not complete a subsequent report when it realized the staff member did not have COVID-19 or that it simply made a mistake in the first place when it filed the report, Strong said.
In the cases of St. Mary’s and Femi Care, no residents were reported having had the disease in their reports, and no deaths were reported attributed to COVID-19.
Strong said that if either of these facilities had had a staff member with COVID-19, it was expected to fill out subsequent reports even if it quarantined or terminated the staff member once the disease was identified.
Charts
Charts 1 to 4 below are based on data from the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report and have been updated to include data from the release of that report at 2:50 p.m. on Saturday.
Chart 5 is based on data from the Georgia Emergency Management Agency Situation Report COVID-19 and has been updated to include data from the late evening report on Saturday.
Charts 1 and 2 include data from the 10-county Northeast Health District of the Department of Public Health, which includes Oconee and Clarke counties.
Charts 3 and 4 show data for the entire state of Georgia.
Chart 5 includes, in the main chart, data for the state of Georgia and, in the inset, data for Region E of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, which includes Oconee and Clarke Counties, the remaining counties in the Northeast Health District, and Franklin and Hart counties.
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| Chart 1 (Click To Enlarge) |
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| Chart 2 (Click To Enlarge) |
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| Chart 3 (Click To Enlarge) |
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| Chart 4 (Click To Enlarge) |
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| Chart 5 (Click To Enlarge) |
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