A slight increase in new positives was noted by the Georgia Department of Public Health, alongside another death and new hospitalizations locally amid an overall downturn in the virus since the holiday surge of numbers across the board.

Today’s reported death from the Department of Public Health does not include any information about gender, age, race or co-morbidity factors, a trend that continues in the state’s reporting on individual deaths in the database since the beginning of the year. Despite the number of deaths being much greater as of this posting, the number available for searching in the online records provided by the state sits at 45 individuals.

This is the ninth death of the month to be reported by the DPH for Polk County, and the 26th death since the beginning of the year.

In all, 70 people have now been confirmed to have perished from COVID locally, or from conditions that were worsened by the disease’s symptoms impacting the body.

Here’s the full list of deaths reported in 2021 for COVID-19 locally.

The state additionally reported another 15 new PCR positives for the virus, and five more added in antibody testing. That brought the total to 3,687 on the day for the total number of PCR positives in Polk, and 1,459 antibody positives since tracking began for each number respectively in locally and across the state. All told, that puts the overall positives at 5,146 positive results for COVID-19 locally.

PCR testing on the two-week moving average remained on a downward trend, now at 8.8%. The overall positive rate remained at 16% for the fourth day running after a two-day increase last week.

One other number that also went down after a one-day increase was probable deaths locally, which was back at seven on the day.

Hospitalizations continue to increase by small numbers on a daily basis, this time with three more admissions added to the overall tally in Polk this afternoon. That brings the monthly total of patients being treated for COVID to 41 in total, an average of nearly two new patients per day. There’s been only two days in February without a new hospital admission reported overall.

Statewide, the total number of PCR cases increased by another 2,337 people on the day to 808,416 in total since tracking began last February. The antigen positives were up by 1,767 in this afternoon’s update alongside those figures, bringing that total to 182,405.

Sadly, the death toll for COVID now stands at 14,761 in total across the state. Another 75 Georgians were reported to have died from the virus on the day. Probable deaths increased by 20 on the day as well, now at 2,166 people who potentially could have died from the virus, but not specifically so.

Alongside those deaths are the continued increase in hospitalizations – jumping from 130 new patients on Monday to 284 this afternoon. The total number of patients treated now sits at 55,167.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s overall tally of positives and deaths have yet to reach figures that other organizations are reporting for the virus nationally, but they are near so with confirmed numbers they present daily. The Atlanta-based agency reported 27,993,504 cases of the virus overall since January 2020, and 498,993 deaths.

President Joe Biden on Monday spoke about the death toll surpassing 500,000, and the number of cases jumping past the 28 million mark. The United States remains the nation with the highest number of reported cases and deaths so far in the global pandemic.

Some good news is the number of vaccinations are daily gaining in numbers and approaching the 100 million mark in the United States. The CDC reported in their daily update that more than 65 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been given across the country, with 19.8 million people receiving the second dose as of this afternoon.

Locally, those numbers are just a small fraction of a percentage point of the total.

The DPH’s reporting on COVID-19 vaccination locally has 5,162 people who have received a dose of the vaccine. 3,546 people have received the first dose locally, and 1,616 took a second.

Statewide, more than 2.2 million doses have been shipped, but only 1,793,989 have been administered so far.