Friday, July 03, 2020

The Northeast Health District Added 131 New Confirmed COVID-19 Cases On Friday, A New Record

***Clarke County Added 198 Cases In Last Week***

The 10-county Northeast Health District of the Department of Public Health added a record 131 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 with the issuance of the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report on Friday.

Included were 54 new cases in Clarke County and 10 in Oconee County.

Clarke County has added 198 cases in the last week and Oconee County has added 30. Every county in the district added multiple cases on Friday.

The University of Georgia reported on Thursday that 189 cases had been recorded among faculty, staff and students, up from 121 on June 27. Not all of those are likely to be reflected in the Department of Public Health tally for Clarke County.

The University reports that “many of the cases included in the count include those reported to the UHC (University Health Center) from the hometowns of students or employees who have not been on campus during this timeframe.”

The seven-day rolling average of added cases for the Northeast Health District on Friday was 71.4, also a new record.

The Daily Status Report included no new deaths in the Northeast Health District, and the seven-day rolling average of added deaths was 0.0, as no new deaths have been reported in the last week.

The Department of Community Health did not issue a Long-Term Care Facility Report on Friday but the report issued late on Thursday did not include any new deaths or cases at the 25 long-term care facilities in the area with COVID-19 cases.

State Data

The state of Georgia recorded 2,784 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Friday, down from the record 3,472 recorded on Thursday.

The seven-day rolling average of added cases increased to 2,499.7, as the state has added 17,498 cases in the last week.

The state added seven deaths, all of them in the last 14 days, and the seven-day rolling average dropped from 14.9 on Thursday to 12.3 on Friday.

The Department of Community Health added four new long-term care facilities to the state’s list of facility with COVID-19 cases with the Thursday release of the Long-Term Care Facility Report.

The Georgia Emergency Management Agency had not issued its daily Situation Report COVID-19 at the time of this post on Friday.

Testing

Since June 3 the Department of Public Health, in the Daily Status Report, has been reporting the number of both Molecular and Serologic tests as well as the verdicts each day for the tests recorded.

The Department of Health states that it is only listing in the table Molecular and Serologic tests reported to the Department through its Electronic Lab Reporting (ELR) system.

“Molecular (PCR) tests detect active virus and infections,” the Department of Public Health reports. “These tests are administered by collecting either nose, nose and throat, or throat specimens.” PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction.

“Serology tests detect whether a person may have previously been infected with COVID-19 by attempting to detect antibodies that the person has produced as a result of the infection,” the Department of Public Health states. “Serology tests are administered by collecting a blood specimen.”

Testing Outcomes Over Time

In Chart 6 below, I have reported the percentage of positive cases across the last month based on the number of tests and number of positive outcomes each day.

The Department of Public Health only reports percentages based on cumulative numbers of tests and outcomes.

June 17 was a turning point for the Molecular tests, as on that day 5.9 percent of the cases were positive.

On Friday, 13.6 percent of the cases were positive.

In contrast, the percentage of Serology tests that produced a positive verdict has declined across time, though not dramatically.

June 17

I also flagged June 17 in Chart 4 below. That is the date when the large surge in confirmed cases began.

The correspondence between the data in Chart 4 and Chart 6 is not exact.

“The number of positive tests in this chart (showing ELR data) will not match the number of confirmed cases because the case numbers include all reporting sources, not just ELR,” the Department of Public Health explains.

Chart 1 and Chart 3 below are based on the number of confirmed cases reported each day, not just those reported through the ELR.

The number of confirmed cases released each day, according to the Department of Public Health, is for “confirmed cases only, defined as an individual with a positive molecular test.

“Only molecular test results are used in identifying confirmed cases,” the Department of Public Health states.

In short, the tests designed to determine active cases of the corona virus are producing a noticeably higher percentage of positive outcomes than they were a little more than two weeks ago.

These data provide further evidence that the increased number of cases is not simply a function of the number of tests administered.

Charts

All of the charts below are based on data from the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report and are updated based on data in the report released at 3:22 p.m. on Friday.

Charts 1 and 2 present data for the 10-county Northeast Health District.

Chart 3 presents data for Clarke and Oconee counties only.

Charts 4 through 6 are for the state of Georgia.

Chart 1 (Click To Enlarge)

Chart 2 (Click To Enlarge)

Chart 3 (Click To Enlarge)

Chart 4 (Click To Enlarge)

Chart 5 (Click To Enlarge)

Chart 6 (Click To Enlarge)

No comments: