COVID-19 numbers remained on an overall downward trend – hitting the lowest new positives on a daily basis in months at midweek – but along with the decrease came with it the addition of two new deaths in Polk County attributed to the virus, per the Department of Public Health’s latest update.

The Georgia DPH’s daily update as of Friday afternoon put the total at 3,644 positives locally, a jump since the last update on February 15 of just 33 cases.

In fact, numbers dwindled down to a low of just two positives added for the virus on Wednesday – a daily increase total not seen since last November. Two-week averages also pushed back down in the process to 10.6% as of Thursday but jumped back up slightly to 11% to end the week. The percentage of positives overall of PCR cases sits at 16.1%, dipping down last week for three days in a row to 16%.

That figure doesn’t include antigen positives, with reported cases also slowing down in recent days. The figure now stands at 1,444 antigen cases identified for the virus locally, which only jumped by 24 since the Feb. 15 update on numbers locally.

Overall, Polk County with the two case types combined as 5,088 cases of COVID, whether identified as live cases or the antibodies from a previous infections from the virus.

A grim figure that did increase over the past week on Wednesday and again on Friday were the number of deaths from the virus. 67 people overall have now died from COVID-19 since the first was reported in May 2020, and 23 people have died from the virus since January 1.

The DPH reported that a 79-year-old white male with co-morbidity factors, and a 71-year-old white male with unknown co-morbidity factors were the latest victims of COVID in Polk County on Wednesday and Friday.

Here’s the full list of those who have died from COVID-19 in Polk County so far this year.

Additionally over the week, COVID-19 continues to see Polk County’s number of patients rise. Another nine people were admitted to area hospitals for medical treatment for COVID, Thursday providing the highest increase of five new patients on the day. In all, 337 people have been treated for COVID-19 in the hospital.

Statewide, the number of COVID-19 patients surpassed the 800,000 mark in Friday’s report, at exactly 800,959 PCR positive results reported since tracking began at the end of February 2020. The number of new patients earlier in the week had dipped down to 1,700+ on a daily basis, but has since began a steady increase again past the 2,000 mark.

On Friday, 2,237 positives were added to the overall mark. It still remains well below the increases reported on a daily basis earlier in the month and year.

The statewide positive rate has mostly moved back and forth this month between 11.2 and 11.1%, and remained there as of Friday afternoon.

Antigen positives at week’s end stood at 179,452 people, those numbers slowly back on the rise as well through the week after starting at 453 on Monday, were back up to 1,646 added as of Friday afternoon.

The number of hospitalizations has also remained above 200 patients added daily through most of the week after starting at its lowest daily increase in months at the beginning of the week. In total, more than 54,000 patients have been treated in Georgia for the virus.

Statewide number of deaths were up to 14,530 at week’s end, starting off with a low figure on Monday and increasing for most of the week on a daily basis past 100 deaths a day of Georgia residents. Another 173 people died as of Friday, the fourth highest daily increase of the month so far.

Nationally, the number of new cases and deaths has overall slowed down. The CDC on Friday reported 27.7 million cases in total for COVID, a jump on the day of just 67,437 new positives. In just the past seven days per the Atlanta-based agency, 503,096 positives have been reported.

491,455 people have died from the virus overall since tracking began in January 2020.

The agency also reported that more than 59 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered so far.