Census enters homestretch
♦ Rome Commissioner Wendy Davis joins a statewide webinar to stress the need for a complete count with just 10 days left.
Communities across Georgia are running out of time to make sure they get a complete count in the 2020 Census.
Monday, Rome City Commissioner Wendy Davis joined the mayors of East
Point, Savannah and Moultrie on a statewide webinar to stress the importance of a full count.
“Folks need to understand that there’s money that all of our taxpayers have sent up to Washington,” Davis said. “We want to get our fair share back.”
Georgia ranks near the bottom of states in its progress on the decennial count, which influences federal money allocations and political representation for the next ten years. The deadline is Sept. 30.
As of Monday, nearly 91% of households in Georgia had completed the census either
“
Folks need to understand that there’s money that all of our taxpayers have sent up to Wash
ington. We want to get our fair share back.”
Rome Commissioner Wendy Davis
on their own initiative or after census takers tracked them down via door- to- door visits or phone calls.
That’s an increase from the 81% completion rate seen earlier this month but still lags behind every other state in the country except Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Montana.
One way to gauge the potential of increased spread is by the area’s positivity rate.
Floyd County had a 13.4% positivity rate on Monday, up from 11.9% last Tuesday. A higher percentage of positive tests could mean that the number of total tests is too low, or could suggest higher transmission rates and more people in the community carrying the coronavirus who have not been tested yet.
The state’s positivity rate also has gone up. The state’s positivity rate was at 7.6% a week ago, on Sept. 15. On Monday it was much higher, at 15.3%, with a seven- day moving average of 10.3%.
Health officials have said they would like to see positivity rates around the 5% mark and that rates of 10% and above could signify a pervasive community spread.
The daily number of new cases locally and in the state had begun to taper off after a mid- July through August spike, which then led to a spike in hospitalizations and deaths.
As of Monday, there were 49 COVID- 19 positive patients being treated at Floyd Medical Center and Redmond Regional Medical Center, according to Floyd County Emergency Management Agency reports.
Georgia Healthcare Preparedness Coalition Region C, which covers Bartow, Chattooga, Floyd, Haralson and Polk counties, has 803 general inpatient beds in use out of 876 total beds — 91.67%. Not all of those beds are filled with COVID-19 patients, but it’s a measure of available capacity.
The Georgia Department of Public Health recorded another local fatality Saturday. So far, 40 Floyd County residents have died from the novel coronavirus. Statewide, there have been 6,604 deaths reported through Monday.
Overall the death rate has continued to slowly decline for the state. Approximately 70 Georgians a day died from a COVID- 19 infection, on average, during a spike in mid- August. That number has dropped to a weekly moving average of just above 38 deaths a day, as of Monday.
CDC rolls back airborne update
The Associated Press reported that the Centers for Disease vention Control removed and an Pre- update on its website that stated coronavirus commonly spreads through the air, saying the post was shared by mistake. “A draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error to the agency’s official website,” the organization wrote Monday. The CDC has contended in the past that COVID- 19 is primarily transmitted through close contact between people. In the erroneously shared update, which was released last Friday, the CDC’S coronavirus guidelines page listed “respiratory droplets or small particles, such as those in aerosols” as one of the ways that COVID- 19 “most commonly spreads.”
“It is possible that COVID- 19 may spread through the droplets and airborne particles that are formed when a person who has COVID- 19 coughs, sneezes, sings, talks, or breathes,” the since- deleted post read.
Following Monday’s update, the CDC’S webpage says the “virus is thought to spread mainly from person- to- person.”
In July, the World Health Organization said there was “emerging evidence” of an airborne spread of coronavirus after 250 scientists across the world signed an open letter urging the group to acknowledge as much.
There have been more than 31 million confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide, and more than 960,000 deaths. The United States has experienced more than 6 million confirmed cases and was approaching 200,000 deaths Monday afternoon.