NE Health District Adds Only 59 COVID Cases, No Deaths, On Monday

The Northeast Health District added only 59 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report on Monday, but it contributed just less than 10 percent of the cases added in the entire state.

Mondays usually are light reporting days to the Daily Status Report, and the state added only 612 cases on Monday, Labor Day. This was the first time the state had added fewer than 1,000 COVID-19 cases since June 22.

The 10-county Northeast Health District, with a population of just more than a half million, is five percent of the state’s population, but its 69 cases made up just less than 10 percent of the new cases reported on Monday.

Since Aug. 24, the District has consistently had more cases that its population alone would warrant. The University of Georgia resumed classes on Aug. 20.

Every county in the District except Morgan and Oglethorpe added at least one case on Monday, with Oconee County adding a single case and Clarke County adding 38. The seven-day rolling average of added cases dropped from 227.3 on Sunday to 218.1 on Monday.

The District did not add any COVID-19 deaths on Monday, which also had been the case on Monday of last week, and the seven-day rolling average of added deaths remained unchanged at 3.1, which is the highest level the District has recorded.

The seven-day rolling average of the percentage of molecular tests that were positive in Oconee County was 10.2 on Monday, the same as it had been on Monday.

In Clarke County, the seven-day rolling average of molecular tests that were positive dropped from 19.2 on Sunday to 17.7 on Monday.

The Georgia Hospital Association and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency on Monday reported that area hospitals had 89 COVID-19 patients, up from 83 on Sunday, 68 ICU Beds In Use out of a capacity of 70, up from 64 on Sunday, and 33 ventilators in use, down from 34 on Sunday.

For more on the story, please go to Oconee County Observations.