Bulloch County saw its fourth death over the weekend directly attributed to the coronavirus and has recorded 67 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases since last Thursday, according to numbers from the Georgia Department of Public Health that county Public Safety Director Ted Wynn noted in his Monday report.
That brought Bulloch County’s total to 299 confirmed cases since reporting on the coronavirus pandemic began. Wynn said the weekend death was a 90-year-old woman.
The Department of Public Health considers a county to be in “substantial spread,” the highest category of community spread, if it has more than 100 cases per 100,000 residents, Wynn reported. Bulloch has a few less than 80,000 residents, according to recent census estimates.
Last Friday, “when we went above 100 cases per 100,000 — which we’re at 328.44 (per 100,000) now — with 261 confirmed positives, that put us into that substantial category,” Wynn said in a phone interview.
Media reports from other parts of Georgia suggest that community spread determinations for school opening decisions may be based on the number of new cases per capita in a 14-day period, rather than the cumulative total. But at this point, Bulloch would also far surpass that mark.
“We’ve seen an increase of over 100 in the last seven to 10 days,” Wynn noted Friday.
Bulloch saw its largest one-day increase so far, 36 cases, in the 24 hours before his Wednesday report.
So far, 24 Bulloch residents have been hospitalized with COVID-19. This increased by four people since Friday.
As of Monday afternoon, East Georgia Regional Medical Center was caring for 14 COVID-19 patients, who may or may not be Bulloch residents. The current number of coronavirus patients in the hospital is the most at any one time since the first patient was admitted in April.
Bulloch County EMS transported three positive and four possible COVID-19 positive patients over the weekend, bringing the total number of patients transported to 32 probable and 17 confirmed cases.
In the past week, more than 12,000 additional cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Georgia, for a total of 79,417 as of 3 p.m. Monday. The United States has recorded 2,545,250 cases and 126,369 deaths. Worldwide, 501,562 people have died due to COVID-19.
The Specimen Point of Collection site is located at the local Health Department, 1 W. Altman St. in Statesboro. For an appointment, please call 855-473-4374.
Again, people should not go to the hospital to seek COVID-19 testing. East Georgia Regional Medical Center is currently only able to test inpatients and those undergoing urgent surgical procedures.