State rolls back Floyd’s COVID-19 death toll by 1
The state rolled back one COVID-19 related death attributed to Floyd County on Thursday.
That adjustment, which has been a regular occurrence in the Georgia Department of Public Health’s daily report, now reflects that Floyd has had 29 cumulative deaths since March.
The Associated Press reported that Gov. Brian Kemp is considering creating mobile testing strike teams to deploy to schools and colleges to control COVID- 19 outbreaks.
If created, the teams could also be used to control coronavirus outbreaks at long- term care facilities. The governor has expressed frustration in recent days that fewer people are being tested in Georgia than at the peak of the summer outbreak in late July, meaning the state has unused testing capacity.
The daily number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continues to decline slowly in Georgia while the number of deaths appear to be on a steady incline.
The daily number of confirmed cases has also declined in Floyd County, but is still well above averages in and prior to midJuly. Floyd has had 390 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the past two weeks and had 18 new cases on Thursday.
On Thursday, the seven-day rolling average of confirmed cases was below 2,400 statewide, the lowest it has been since early July. Georgia’s fatalities rose to 5,393 Thursday, and the state continues to average more than 70 deaths a day.
Georgia continues to have the secondhighest number of new confirmed cases per capita over the past 14 days, though, according to calculations by The Associated Press.
Hospitalizations of people with the respiratory illness have fallen about 30% since an early August peak.
Locally, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 also has begun to decline. On Thursday there were 24 COVID-19 patients at Floyd Medical Center and 21 at Redmond Regional Medical Center. There were also three patients awaiting test results.
Those patients being treated at local hospitals are often from surrounding counties.