The number of new COVID-19 cases has jumped by 50 in the past two days in Polk County, and the number of new hospital patients went up by another two during a month of continued growth of the virus in the community, according to figures from the Georgia Department of Public Health.

On Thursday, the DPH reported 24 new positives for the virus and a new hospital patient, and followed that up with this afternoon’s addition of another 26 more people with COVID-19, and one more patient.

That brings the total as of earlier today to 927 positives, sending Polk County sailing past another milestone and on the way to 1,000 total positives for the virus. It might remain just tiny fraction of the number of people the Census estimated lived in Polk County as of 2018 – more than 43,000 – but the summer increase of the virus is still growing exponentially.

As of July 1, the number of positives stood at 208. There was a brief misreporting of a second death, and the number of people who required hospital treatment was at 17. Fast forward seven weeks later, and Polk County is now nearing 1,000 positives and the number of hospitalizations is 2.5 times more than it was when summer was ramping up.

Statewide, the number of COVID-19 positives went up by another 3,320 new cases in the past 24 hours, up by 5,742 in the past two days since the last of these reports. That’s out of a total of nearly 2 million tests administered across the state, or around a fifth of all people living in Georgia.

Hospital patients went up by another 237 people to 21,818, with ICU admissions sitting at 3,999 as of August 14. Sadly, Georgia lost another 35 citizens to the virus to bring the death toll to 4,573.

Nationwide, 1,169 new deaths were reported as of August 13 according to the CDC in confirmed data, with 166,317 people having perished due to COVID-19 since tracking began. There were another 52,799 positive added to the overall tally of 5,228,817 cases in the United States.