The opening of March has seen an overall slowdown in the number of new cases of COVID-19 locally, but midweek saw the first reported death a just under year after the first case of COVID-19 showed up locally.

It marks the 72nd death overall, and the 28th reported since the beginning of 2021.

The Georgia Department of Public Health today added a death without providing additional information in the total list of deaths available, which ends at 47 in the state database online. This has been a persistent problem with the DPH reporting website throughout 2021 as deaths increase around the state.

Here’s a full list of all the COVID-19 deaths reported since the beginning of 2021.



Since the start of the new month, COVID has mostly slowed down and remained in single digit increases, with only 17 cases reported over the past three days (6 on Monday, 4 on Tuesday, 7 at midweek.) Those were the PCR cases – only 14 new antigen cases were added in the past three days as well, the largest increase reported today at 10.

Local percentages of PCR positives stood at 15.8% overall, and was now down to 7.8% on the two week average.

All totaled, that puts Polk County’s PCR cases at 3,746, with 1,514 antigen cases in total. Combined, that puts Polk’s total number of cases at 5,260.

Hospitalizations only increased by one on the month so far, sitting at 348 in total.

The number of probable deaths from COVID-19 increase to 9 with today’s update, after sitting at 8 for the final days of February after previously decreasing by one for a two-day stretch at seven last month.



Statewide, totals surpassed 820,000 total PCR cases, and are nearing 200,000 antigen positives as of the midweek report. The case percentage remained at 11% statewide. Official totals sat at 823,008, and 191,534 for each category.

There were 15,349 total deaths as of March 3, and 56,369 people had been hospitalized in Georgia. 9,186 people have needed ICU treatment since tracking began.

Probable deaths from COVID-19 statewide were at 2,276 in total at midweek.

As of Wednesday, some 6,368 people had been vaccinated for COVID locally. Some 3,725 people have received the first dose, and another 2,643 have now received a second.

Statewide, 2.8 million doses have been shipped and 76% of that total have now been administered.

As of this afternoon, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention put the total number of cases at 28,514,774 nationwide and 515,277 deaths reported.

The agency cited 80.5 million doses of the vaccine distributed nationwide, with 26,957,804 people receiving the second dose so far.



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