The 10-county Northeast Health District added 836 new cases of COVID-19 in the two-week period ending on Friday, and 14 new confirmed deaths from the disease.
One of those added deaths was of a 41-year-old male in Oconee County without a chronic condition.
The Department of Public Health did not issue a Daily Status Report last Friday, the day after the holiday, making the two-week comparison necessary.
The average number of added cases in the two weeks since Nov. 19 was 59.7 per day on Friday, compared with 59.3 in the week ending on Nov. 19.
The similarity of the averages is further evidence of a leveling off of what had been a steady drop in cases in the District. The average number of cases per week had been 41.4 on Nov. 12 but was 80.1 on Nov. 5.
Oconee County added 62 cases in the two weeks ending on Friday, compared with 54 in the week ending on Nov. 19.
Clarke County added 120 new cases in the two weeks ending on Friday, compared with 67 in the week ending on Nov. 19.
Rolling Averages
The seven-day rolling average of added cases in Oconee County on Friday per 100,000 population was 9.6, and it was 6.2 in Clarke County.
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Two weeks ago those rolling averages had been 17.4 in Oconee County and 7.1 in Clarke County.
The unstandardized rolling average of added cases in Oconee County on Friday was 4.0, compared with 5.1 on Friday of last week and 7.3 on Nov. 19.
In Clarke County, the unstandardized seven-day rolling average of added cases on Friday was 8.0, compared with 8.0 on Friday of last week and 9.3 on Nov. 19.
The Oconee County death was the second youngest in the county going back to the outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020. It was the 74th confirmed death from COVID-19 in the county and the first recorded since week of Oct. 22.
The remaining confirmed COVID-19 deaths in the Northeast Health District in the last week were in Barrow (1), Elbert (2), Jackson (3), Morgan (4), and Walton (3) counties.
The Northeast Health District now has recorded 1,264 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
The Northeast Health District had 120 “probable” deaths from COVID-19 on Friday, an increase of one from two weeks earlier.
Elbert County reported the new “probable” death.
These data are from the Friday Daily Status Report of the Department of Public Health.
Oconee County Schools
As of the end of classes on Thursday, Oconee County Schools had recorded 410 cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the school year on Aug. 4, based on data released by the schools in response to open records requests filed by a group of parents.
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The parents are reporting the released data on the Safety First Facebook page, but they also have released the data to me for my own analysis.
As of the beginning of the 16th full week of classes on Nov. 29, the number of reported cases had been 409, up by nine from Nov.15. Oconee County Schools added only one case after classes started following the week-long holiday break.
Oconee County Schools releases to the public only the number of Active Cases in the schools at the end of the class week.
In its report on Friday, Oconee County Schools reported only one Active COVID-19 Case, compared with eight cases on Nov. 19, before the holiday break.
The single case reported on Friday is the lowest number of cases reported in any week since the beginning of the school year.
School Age Data, Test Positivity Rates
Oconee County overall added nine cases among those aged 5 to 17 in the week ending at the beginning of the day on Nov. 18, according to the School Aged COVID-19 Surveillance Data released by the Department of Public Health on Friday.
The report showed an addition of 47 cases across all age groups, with only one of them for children under five years of age, six for persons 18 to 22, and 31 of he cases were those persons 23 years old and older.
The percentages of added cases that were for persons 5 to 17 years old was 19.1, down from 30.3 percent the week earlier.
These figures are based on the rapid antigen and molecular tests results.
In Oconee County, the seven-day rolling average of the positivity rate of the molecular PCR test for COVID-19 was 5.9 percent on Friday, down from 7.1 percent on Friday of last week.
In Clarke County on Friday, the seven-day rolling average of the positivity rate of PCR tests was 2.1 percent, down from 6.1 on Nov. 26.
University, Hospital Reports
The University of Georgia on Wednesday, in its COVID-19 Health and Exposure Updates, reported 18 positive COVID-19 tests, down from 24 in the previous week.
The report covered the period of Nov. 22 to 28.
The University reported that 280 walk-in tests were performed on individuals by the University Health Center, down from 599 a week earlier, and two of the tests last week came back positive.
The positivity rate for the walk-in tests was 0.7 percent, compared with 0.0 percent a week earlier.
The Georgia Hospital Association and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency reported on Friday that the number of COVID-19 patients at area hospitals was 34, up by one from two weeks ago.
The number of ICU beds in use was 65, up from 62 two weeks earlier, and the number of adult ventilators in use was 31, up from 30 a week earlier.
The listed number of available ICU beds at area hospitals is 70.
Vaccine Updates
According to the raw data behind the Department of Public Health Vaccine Distribution Dashboard for Friday, 46.5 percent of the residents of the Northeast Health District had at least one dose of a vaccine and 42.8 percent were fully vaccinated.
Those percentages changed just slightly from two weeks ago. On Nov. 19, 46.0 percent with at least one dose of the vaccine and 42.3 percent were fully vaccinated.
In Oconee County, 58.7 percent of the population has at least one dose in Friday’s report, and 54.5 percent is fully vaccinated. Those figures had been 58.0 percent and 53.8 percent two weeks ago.
In Clarke County, 49.3 percent of the population has as least one dose and 45.2 percent is fully vaccinated. Those figures were 48.8 percent and 44.6 percent last week.
These figures differ from those on the Vaccine Dashboard because the Department of Public Health uses old projections--and lower numbers--for the populations of the two counties.
Vaccine Administrations
The Department of Public Health reported adding 17,384 vaccinations administered in the Northeast Health District in the two weeks ending on Friday.
Oconee County added 1,844 vaccinations in the last two weeks, and Clarke County added 4,851.
The Department of Public Health is not providing data on the number of added vaccination that are boosters, and some of the confusion in reporting could result from that fact.
State, National Comparisons
Georgia, with 49.8 percent of its population fully vaccinated, ranks 10th from the bottom among the 50 states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Nationally, the percentage of persons fully vaccinated was nearly 10 percentage points higher on Friday at 59.7 percent.
Until recently, the vaccine was being administered only to those 12 years old and older.
Nationally, 71.4 percent of the population 12 or older is vaccinated.
That figure is 58.8 percent in Georgia.
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