Another death was reported in Polk County due to COVID-19 in this afternoon’s data release from the Georgia Department of Public Health, making October now the deadliest month so far locally for the virus.

Several deaths have been reported in the system over past months, and among those are two additional deaths not previously accounted for in recent days.

That included a 49-year-old man who died in early October, and a 53-year-old man who was reported to have COVID-19 after he died in a wreck out of state. His COVID-19 diagnosis came during a postmortem autopsy, and because notification and an official death certificate weren’t immediately available was not in the system until later.

The 54-year old man died in September in the wreck.

Per the DPH reporting, the latest known death is that of a 56-year-old male with no pre-existing conditions was listed as the most recent victim of COVID-19 in Polk County, and put the death toll at 28 in total.

The last recorded death prior was reported this past Friday. It is worth noting that health officials have said in the past and continue to cite that deaths from the virus reported by the DPH’s daily update are not numbers counted on the previous day, but when they are officially reported and loaded into the overall system keeping track of COVID-19’s spread throughout Georgia.

It is also worth noting that daily increases in COVID-19 are also not live numbers, since the system relies on when laboratory reporting is sent in, tallied and uploaded as well.

Though not an up-to-date count on a daily basis, the data is useful in helping understand and track the spread of COVID-19 in the community and give a basis on which to be concerned about how each county is fighting the virus.

Three new positives were reported this afternoon, which brought Polk County’s overall total to 1,701 positives that have been reported since tracking began. The overall rate remained at 12.3% for the fourth day in a row, putting Polk County’s number of tests submitted back to the DPH at 13,829 at this time, though the two week rate went down again by two-tenths of a percentage point at 10.6%.

The number of hospital patients treated for COVID-19 from Polk County remained at 131 people.

Statewide, the number of new positives for the virus rose by 975, with 351,881 positives reported statewide overall. The positive rate remained at 9.5% for the third day in a row.

The number of deaths reported went up by 18, and the number of hospitalizations statewide were up by 19. That put the overall totals of 31,087 patients treated statewide, and the number of deaths at 7,827.

Nationwide, the number of COVID-19 cases reported by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention now sits at 8,617,022, an increase of a new 63,195 positives from Saturday to Sunday. The number of deaths now sits at 224,601, an increase of a new 380 as of October 25.