Health & Fitness
Oconee Adds Third Death In Three Days In Daily Status Report
The Department of Public Health lists 16 deaths in the last week in the Northeast Health District.
Oconee County added a ninth death attributed to COVID-19 in the Wednesday Daily Status Report of the Georgia Department of Public Health, and Walton County added three deaths, bringing the total number of deaths attributed to the disease in the Northeast Health District to 77.
The 10-county Northeast Health District has added 16 COVID-19 deaths in the last week, and the seven-day rolling average of added deaths attributed to the disease in the District stood at 2.3 at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, the same as the day before.
The death reported on Wednesday was the third death in as many days in Oconee County attributed to COVID-19 by the Department of Public Health.
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The death was of a 69-year-old African-American male without a chronic condition.
The Department of Public Health began this week releasing racial data at the county level on those who have died as a result of the disease.
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Three of the nine deaths in Oconee County have been of African-Americans. According to the U.S. Census Bureau estimates for July 1 of 2019, only 5.3 percent of the county’s residents are African-American, and another 1.5 percent are classified as individuals belonging to two or more races.
The Georgia Department of Community Health Long-Term Care Facility Report for 2 p.m. on Wednesday lists eight deaths at the High Shoals Health And Rehabilitation nursing home in North High Shoals in the west of the county, the only Oconee County facility on its list.
The correspondence between the reports of the Department of Public Health and of the Department of Community Health has been spotty over time, and, given the ages of several of the deceased listed in the Department of Public Health Daily Status Report, it is unlikely that they were in a nursing home when they died.
The suggestion is that the nine deaths listed in the Daily Status Report for Oconee County are an undercount.
For more COVID-19 data from Wednesday reports both for the region and for the state, please go to Oconee County Observations.