Floyd COVID-19 cases stabilizing

The number of Floyd County’s new COVID-19 cases has begun to flatten over the last few days, after a slight jump over the weekend.

Dr. Gary Voccio, director of the Department of Public Health Northwest Georgia district, said Tuesday the upward curve has started to slightly flatten thanks to shelter in place orders and people following social distancing guidelines.

However, the director also stated that, based on the current model, the area is approaching a peak in the next two weeks.

Floyd County had two new confirmed cases Thursday, making a total of 122 cases. The county’s death toll remained at six.

Bartow County’s cases rose by 3 Thursday, bringing the total to 240. And two more residents in the neighboring county died, for a total of 22 fatalities there so far.

Statewide, 1,108 more people tested positive for COVID-19 Thursday. Of the 16,368 total cases, nearly 20% of them — 3,260 — required hospitalization.

Deaths in the state increased by 41 since Wednesday night, bringing the total to 617. That puts the fatality rate at 3.77%.

Hospitals in Floyd County reported 17 patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 as of Thursday night and another 19 awaiting results. Twenty test results came back negative.

The Georgia Department of Public Health typically updates its case numbers twice a day, at noon and 7 p.m. However, the website posted new numbers at 6 a.m. Thursday and again a little after 9 a.m.

According to Nancy Nydam, the director of communications for DPH, technicians were working on the site and threw off the automatic updates. This also caused the noon update to be delayed by almost half an hour.

Nydam said the issue was resolved and the twice daily updates would resume as originally scheduled.