Northeast Region Adds 25 COVID-19 Cases

The number of COVID-19 confirmed cases on Wednesday increased by 25 in the 10-county Northeast Health District, and, with a death of an 87-year-old male with known underlying conditions in Walton County, the number of deaths increased by one.

Oconee County added two new confirmed cases with the noon Daily Status Report of the Georgia Department of Public Health on Wednesday, and Clarke County added three.

The number of confirmed cases in the 10-county Northeast Health District, which includes Oconee and Clarke counties, stood at 380 at noon on Wednesday, and the number of deaths attributable to the disease was 22.

Across the state, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 increased by 764 to 14,987 and the number of deaths increased by 51 to 552.

For both the Northeast Health District and the state as a whole, the increase in the number of new confirmed cases was less on Wednesday than had been the case on Tuesday, but the number of new deaths across the state was greater on Wednesday than it had been on Tuesday.

The Northeast Health District added one death each of the last two days.

The Georgia Department of Public Health released additional detail on Wednesday of how it gathers data for the Daily Status Report, saying that information is from more than “74 Georgia hospitals and most of the major commercial laboratories” as required by Georgia law.

Late on Tuesday, the Department of Public Health announced it had expanded testing criteria for COVID-19, allowing more people to be tested at the drive-through sites being operated by the Northeast Health District.

For more on this story, with charts summarizing the data and the full methodological note from the Department of Public Health, please go to Oconee County Observations.