Polk County jumped to over 2,400 positives during the week of Christmas, and another death was added to bring the total to 42 on the year per the latest from the Georgia Department of Public Health figures.

The DPH figures showed a big jump in the number of positives in recent days, bringing the two-week average up to 22.5% on Christmas day and brought the figure at the beginning of the week to 2,295 to 2,412 since Monday. The two-week average on Monday sat at 13.6%, and had been going up in recent days.

Polk County’s latest death was reported on December 24 and brought the number for the month to nine overall. The latest victim of the virus was a 76-year-old white female with no co-morbidity factors.

Here’s a full list of those who have died of COVID-19 in 2020 from Polk County.

With the recent increase of new cases this week in Polk County, it brought the overall rate up to 13.4% for the year locally. With those numbers, Polk County’s number of tests conducted sits around 18,000 as of Christmas Day, December 25.

Antigen positive cases found locally through testing also increased in overall total, up from 715 at the beginning of the week to 793 as of the afternoon report on the holiday.

One additional increase over the past days is the number of hospitalizations, now at 213 and up from 209 this past Monday.

Georgia’s overall hospitalizations are increasing as well, up 1,320 new patients reported by the DPH from December 21 through today. The ICU cases also jumped, up 179 patients admitted during the week. Those overall totals now sit at 40,630 patients treated since tracking began, and 7,224 patients who needed intensive care treatment.

The statewide total of positives jumped by another 5,145 people who have tested positive in the state today, bringing the total to 537,096 Georgians who have tested positive for the virus since tracking began.

The positive rate went from 9.6 to 9.8 over the week, a two-tenths of a percentage jump since the week began and following a trend across the Southeast in increasing people who have COVID-19.

Tennessee remains among those with the highest increase in new cases in the south, but Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas are all seeing growth in new positives, and Georgia is trending up.

So is the number of deaths, up another 221 in the state since December 21. Sadly, 9,656 Georgians have perished due to COVID-19 in the past days.

Nationwide, the number of deaths in total now sits at 325,096 people unable to overcome COVID-19. On Christmas day, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention put the number of new people who have died at 3,362.

Another 221,408 people were reported to have the virus on Christmas Day by the Atlanta-based agency, with just over 1 million new positives added in the past week to bring the total from Monday to now to 18,391,571. At the start of the week, that figure sat at 17,391,270.