Since the last update on COVID-19’s spread throughout the community, the trend of new daily cases remaining on a generally downward slope continues, but the rate of new hospitalizations remains steady on course through the past week in Polk County as the state continues to see a general push toward 800,000 positives in total, and the national figures topped 27 million last week.

Polk County’s latest total PCR positives stood at 3,611 – up since the last update on Feb. 9 by just 64 positives. Overall for the month of February, that puts the total of new positives at 168, and for 2021 in total at 1,012.

With those figures, that puts the growth of new cases on the year so far at 28% of the total since tracking began last March with the first positive reported.

However, it is noteworthy that since the last update, the number of new daily positives is continuing a downward trend overall.

Though February 10 saw a jump of 10 positives and February 11 saw another bump of 16, the next days have seen nine, seven, two days of 12 positives and eight today added tot the tally.

Figures of new positives for PCR testing are separate from antigen positive cases, which have also in recent days slowed in increases on a daily basis. Only 25 antigen positives have been added in the past six days, bringing the overall total to 1,420 since tracking began for those figures locally in the state database.

The one number that hasn’t quite slowed down is the number of new hospitalizations. January saw a huge increase in the total, and February has already added 26 in total to bring the overall figure to 328 people treated for COVID locally since tracking began.

Since Feb. 9, the number has jumped by eight. Though it is noteworthy in the data over the past six days, that two of those have seen no increase in patients, but also the largest one day increase of four following no jump at all.

Just one patient was added in this afternoon’s update for the President’s Day holiday.

Additional positive news: no new deaths have been added to the state database for Polk County since the last update on Feb. 9 as well. That figure – along with probable deaths at 5 – have seen no additional increases in the past six days locally.

Polk County’s overall percentage of positives and two-week average are also trending down through the month, the overall percentage now down to an even 16% covering the past 11 months since Polk County’s first positive was included in state figures. The two-week average is now down to 12.9%, numbers that haven’t been seen since November before the holiday spike.

Statewide, numbers are generally increasing on a daily basis between 1,000 and 2,000 new PCR positives since the last update, and went as high as 3,300+ in that time. However, the past two days have seen a dip back down into the 1,700+ case range.

Total PCR positives stand at 792,509 cases in Georgia. Separate from that number are antigen positives, now at 174,298. Those figures were down for the weekend as well – in the hundreds of new antigen-positive cases instead of more than 1,000 a day – but just more than 14,000 have been added in the past two weeks compared to the leap in numbers experienced during the height of the holiday spike.

The overall average was at 11.2% in past days, but has since dipped back down through the weekend to 11.1% where it remained this afternoon. 6,870,677 PCR tests have been conducted since tracking began, along with 463,362 antigen tests.

New deaths and hospitalizations are also decreasing. Hundreds of new patients were reported through last week, but on Sunday dipped down to 39, and 24 in this afternoon’s report. Deaths on a daily basis dropped from over 100+ on Saturday to just four on Sunday, and 33 on Monday.

In part that could be due to the holiday, but that will be determined in the days to come with additional statewide data.

Probable deaths stood at 1,931 as of this afternoon.

Nationally, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention posted a new figure of 27,417,468 cases in the United States for COVID, and 482,536 deaths. That was after a two-day pause for the President’s Day holiday over the weekend.

Last week, the nation surpassed the 27 million case mark on Feb. 10, but new growth in cases has since begun to slow and follow with local and state trends.