The average number of new COVID-19 cases reported each day in Anderson County has continued to slowly decline in May and early June, and the positivity rate has remained low. However, 10 more hospitalizations and one more death have been reported in the past three weeks.
The average number of new cases in the county during the past two weeks has been 3.6. That’s down from an average of 5.6 new cases per day during the previous two weeks.
It appears to be the lowest number of new cases per day, on average, since one year ago, in June 2020. That was before COVID-19 cases peaked in Anderson County in July and then peaked again in the winter, with many more cases, hospitalizations, and deaths from November 2020-January 2021.
The decline in the average number of new cases per day has been slow, especially starting in about April. Oak Ridge Today reported more than three weeks ago that the new daily case average had dropped to about six, and the positivity rate was about 3 percent.
The positivity rate appears to have remained fairly constant since then; it’s still at about 3 percent. The positivity rate measures, as a percentage, how many patients test positive for COVID-19 out of all those tested each day. The World Health Organization has had a guideline that calls for keeping the positivity rate at or below 5 percent.
There has been one more death due to COVID-19 and 10 more hospitalizations since a May 12 report by Oak Ridge Today, a little more than three weeks ago. For comparison, in mid-December, Anderson County was averaging one COVID-19 death and two hospitalizations per day.
It’s not clear that COVID-19 will completely go away, but the new daily case numbers have been below 12, on average, since late March. It’s not immediately clear what has caused the drop in cases and positivity rate, and whether it’s because of increased vaccinations, continued health precautions, or people spending more time outdoors, or some combination of those factors or others.
Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have also fallen in Tennessee and across the United States, although the disease continues to affect people, including children.
In Anderson County, 8,830 cases of COVID-19 have been reported since the pandemic began March 20, according to the Tennessee Department of Health. That means that more than 10 percent of the county’s population has been infected.
Anderson County has had 172 people die from COVID-19 and 227 people hospitalized, the state health department said. About 1.9 percent of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 have died from it in Anderson County, and roughly 2.6 percent of patients have been hospitalized.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
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