COVID-19 rate drops in Floyd, region
The number of new COVID-19 cases has consistently dropped over the past two months in Floyd County compared with December and January peaks.
There have been 322 positive cases of COVID-19 over the past two weeks. That is comparable with valleys in June and October, just prior to summer and post-thanksgiving peaks, which often reported over 700 new infections in a two-week period.
While the number has dropped dramatically, Floyd County is still well above the Georgia Department of Health’s definition of a high transmission area.
The state DPH defines high transmission as over 100 cases in a week and a positivity rate of over 10%.
Floyd County’s overall positivity rate is at 11%, but in the past two weeks has dropped down to 6.8%. That lower percentage of positives is closer to the target of around 5% that public health officials have said they’d like to see.
Public health officials monitor that percentage of positive cases as a critical indicator of how widespread the disease is in a community. It also is a measurement of whether the amount of testing is providing an accurate picture of the transmission of the disease.
Those holiday peaks, which began to decline in January, led to record hospitalizations. Lately, the number of patients has been registering a decline.
Currently there are 42 people hospitalized locally with COVID-19. During the peaks there were between 140 to 160 patients hospitalized in Floyd County.
The number of COVID-19 deaths is likely to follow the downward trend as well. There were 25 deaths in February and there have been three in March. So far, 165 Floyd County residents have died as a result of a COVID-19 infection and another 33 deaths are suspected to be the result of the disease.
Regionally, new cases of COVID-19 are also down, comparatively. Bartow, Gordon and Walker counties within northwest Georgia are still showing higher rates of infections. Whitfield County, which had extremely high infection rates over the past few months, has slowed and their numbers are now under many lesser populated counties in the region.
While Georgia is one of the lowest ranking states nationally on vaccine distribution, Floyd County is among the top ranked counties in the state.
Floyd County has administered 19,528 first doses and 15,946 second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. The more populous Bartow County has administered 8,781 first doses and 6,246 second doses. Gordon County has administered 6,338 first doses and 4,604 second doses.