There might be something to the weekend effect on Polk County’s number of new positives reported on a daily basis by the Georgia Department of Public Health. After a sharp decrease in the number of new positives, it went right back up for Tuesday according to the latest report from this afternoon.

The DPH’s data reported an increase of 13 new positives for the virus, bringing the total since tracking began to 974. On Monday, the increase was just three cases.

New data this afternoon also cited an additional hospital patient added to the rolls from Polk County, bringing that total now to 45.

The number of total cases is now dozens away from reaching 1,000 after spending months well below the rest of the area. Floyd, Bartow and Paulding counties all reached more than 1,000 cases back in July, and now sit closer to the 2,000 positives in total range.

Haralson County to the south by comparison was at 256 positives in total since tracking began.

Statewide, the number of new cases went back up again for Tuesday, but not in as great a number of positives on a daily basis that have been reported in past days. Georgia’s daily increase was up by 2,873 positives for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, a bump that brought the total since tracking began to 241,677 cases. That’s out of a total of 2,060,319 molecular and 258,672 antibody tests administered.

That’s a 10.7% positive rate overall for the state at this time out of the tests administered and reported as of this afternoon.

Out of those who have tested positive, Georgia has seen 22,429 hospital patients treated for COVID-19 come through medical centers, an increase of 296 over the past day. Georgia’s number of ICU patients stood at a total of 4,177 since tracking began as well.

Sadly, 69 new Georgians died from the virus, bringing the total to 4,794 since tracking began in February.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention put the nationwide death toll as of August 17 with confirmed numbers at 169,870 since the beginning of the year, with an increase of a new 520 people who perished in the past day from the virus.

40,117 new positives were reported as of August 17 as well, bringing the nationwide total of infected to 5,422,242 people who have tested positive for COVID-19.

As a reminder, please wear a mask out in public to help prevent the spread, stay six feet from people whenever possible and keep your hands clean and sanitized.

Governor Brian Kemp did extend his emergency declaration over the COVID-19 virus first put in place in March, and did allow for local governments to institute their own mandates on mask use with limitations.