COVID-19 cases hit an all-time high last week in Washington County, pushing the county’s seven-day rolling average to 46 cases a day. That’s up 46 percent over November, which itself was up 96 percent over the prior month, City Manager Mike Bailey reported Friday.
“We continue to monitor the daily results of cases in Washington County and, while it is important to focus on trends rather than on any particular day, we did see a reported 109 cases over a 24-hour period last Wednesday,” Bailey said. “Last week we averaged 46 new cases per day with individual results of 30, 83, 18, 16, 34, 109 and 33. This brought our rolling seven-day average per 100,000 population to 88.73 as of last Thursday. This is a new high point for this critical metric.”
Bailey said one other measure that these recent results will impact is the county’s average number of new cases per day by month.
“For the first 17 days of December, we were at 34.2 cases per day,” he said. “That is up 46 percent over November, and November was up 96 percent over October, which was up 71 percent over September. It’s very clear our numbers are continuing on an upward trend.”
Bailey said local hospital officials are reporting continued issues with staffing and ICU space, and stressed the importance of complying with all CDC guidelines regarding COVID-19 in the weeks and months ahead.
“I know we’ve been saying this for a while, but it is vital that we all do everything in our power to stop the spread of COVID-19,” he said. “That means wearing a mask in public, maintaining distance between yourself and others, washing your hands, avoiding gatherings and following all guidelines issued by the CDC.
“The coming availability of vaccines is promising, but these are steps we can and must take right now to avoid the dark winter the experts are predicting in our country, including right here in Washington County.”
As of Monday, COVID-19 had claimed the lives of 53 Washington County residents and 2,218 Oklahomans — 164 of them just last week. Nearly 1.7 million people have died worldwide, including more than 300,000 in the U.S.