Friday, October 02, 2020

State Reports List New COVID-19 Deaths In Walton And Elbert Counties And 91 New COVID-19 Cases In Northeast Health District

***Oconee County Schools Report Increases In Cases, Quarantines***

The Department of Public Health listed 91 new COVID-19 cases and one death from the disease in the Northeast Health District in the Daily Status Report on Friday, and the seven-day rolling averages of cases and deaths in the District remained largely unchanged.

The death was of a male in Walton County with a chronic condition aged 90 plus, and the seven-day rolling average of added deaths in the Status Report was 1.7, the same as on Thursday.

Walton County now has 56 deaths from the virus, the highest number of any of the 10 counties in the Northeast Health District, which has 258 deaths total in the Daily Status Report.

The Department of Community Health also reported one death in its Friday Long-Term Care Facility Report–at PruittHealth Spring Valley nursing home in Elbert County. The nursing home now has seven deaths, and Elbert County has 11 deaths listed in the Department of Community Health report.

Though the Department of Public Health distributes the Department of Community Health Long-Term Care Facility Report, it does not include deaths listed in that report in the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report, the official lists of deaths from the disease in the state. The Daily Status Report lists only five deaths in Elbert County.

With the addition of the 91 new COVID-19 cases in the Daily Status Report, the seven-day rolling average of added cases was 79.0 on Friday. That figure was 79.9 on Thursday.

Oconee County did not add any new cases with the release of the Daily Status Report on Friday, but Clarke County added 40 cases.

The Department of Public Health did not report positivity rates for tests in Oconee and Clarke counties on Friday.

The Department of Community Health reported two new cases of COVID-19 among staff at long-term care facilities in the 10-county Northeast Health District. The new staff cases were at PruittHealth Athens heritage nursing home in Clarke County and at The Pearl at Loganville personal care home in Walton County.

The Georgia Hospital Association (GHA) and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) reported on Friday that area hospitals had 60 COVID-19 patients, down from 62 on Thursday, 66 ICU beds in use out of a capacity of 70, up from 65 on Thursday, and 33 adult ventilators in use, up from 32 on Thursday.

Oconee County Schools

Oconee County Schools reported on Friday that it has six Active COVID-19 cases at the end of the school week and 112 Active Quarantines Due to Close Contact.

A week earlier, the school system reported three Active COVID-19 cases and 33 Active Quarantines.

The largest number of cases in a week, 13, were reported in the weeks ending Aug. 21 and Aug. 28, and the largest number of Active Quarantines (117) was reported on the week ending Aug. 28. The 112 Quarantines reported on Friday is the second largest number reported.

Oconee County Schools does not release to the public information on the schools with the cases or quarantines and does not provide any information on the nature of the cases.

Parents have forwarded to me emails from school administrators reporting cases this past week at Oconee County High School (Sept. 27), Malcom Bridge Middle School (Sept. 29), and North Oconee High School (Sept. 30).

The emails from Malcom Bridge and North Oconee said “we were alerted to an individual in our school who tested positive for COVID-19.”

The email from Kevin J. Yancey, principal at Oconee County High School, on Sept. 27 said “Today we were alerted to four students in our school who tested positive for COVID-19.”

Parents have sent me emails regarding seven cases at North Oconee High School since school began, the largest numbers of forwarded emails for any of the schools in the system.

State Data

Across the state, the Daily Status Report on Friday added 45 new deaths, with 21 of them in the last 14 days. The seven-day rolling average of added deaths dropped to 34.0 on Friday from 35.1 on Thursday.

The state removed two cases from the archive of death attributed to COVID-19, and it reported that one of the added deaths occurred as far back in time as July 28.

The Daily Status Report added 1,337 new COVID-19 cases, and the seven-day rolling average of added cases dropped to 1,199.9 on Friday from 1,229.9 on Thursday.

The state added only 15,621 new molecular tests, and the seven-day rolling average of added tests dropped to 17,502.7.

The positivity rate for the added tests on Friday was 5.8 percent, and the seven-day rolling average of that statistic was 7.2, the same as the day before.

Across the state, the Georgia Hospital Association and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency reported 1,270 COVID-19 patients on Friday, down from 1,307 on Thursday, 2,309 ICU beds in use, down from 2,313 on Thursday, and 900 adult ventilators in use, down from 924 on Thursday.

The Department of Community Health on Thursday reported COVID-19 cases among residents and/or staff of 645 of the state’s 790 long-term care facilities with 25 or more beds, down from 646 on Thursday.

The data in the Long-Term Care Facility Report are provided by the facility operators themselves, and they are not supposed to remove their facility from the list once they have had a COVID-19 infection. Some do, and the Department of Community Health does not correct the error.

Charts

All of the charts 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 Friday.

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.

Chart 3 presents data for Oconee and Clarke counties in the main chart. The insert uses data from Oconee County Schools.

Charts 4 and 5 show data for the entire state of Georgia.

Click on any of the charts to enlarge it.

Chart 1

Chart 2

Chart 3

Chart 4

Chart 5

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