Murphy – Case numbers may not be the most important metric when it comes to COVID-19, but the current figures are nonetheless eye popping.
The Cherokee County Health Department reported Monday that 367 residents tested positive for the coronavirus over a seven-day period, as the highly contagious Omicron variant continues its record-setting spread across the United States. The county’s latest tally of new cases represents a greater than tenfold increase in a span of just three weeks, after the department reported only 34 new cases on Dec. 20.
“I think our lowest day was 48 positive cases,” Health Director David Badger said of the past week.
Cherokee County is a microcosm of the nation as a whole. The U.S. reported 1.35 million new COVID-19 infections Monday – shattering a record for the highest daily total for any country in the world since the pandemic began. The previous record was 1.03 million cases on Jan. 3.
Cherokee County had 380 known active cases of the virus as of Monday. The health department also announced the county’s 105th COVID-19 related death, an individual in their late-60s. Four days earlier, an individual in their mid-50s accounted for 104th local COVID-19 related fatality.
While COVID-19 hospitalizations also set a new nationwide record of 132,646 on Monday – and Erlanger Western Carolina Hospital in Peachtree was full over the weekend – those numbers seem to be part of a more complicated picture.
Public health officials have indicated that Omicron appears to cause less damage to the lungs than previous COVID-19 variants. Common symptoms of Omicron include a cough, headache, sore throat and runny nose – typically without the loss of taste or smell that was once a tell-tale sign of the virus.
In data published by the UK National Health Service, 33 percent of the 8,321 COVID-positive cases in England on Dec. 28 were “incidental” admissions – individuals admitted to a hospital for a different reason. Similar studies in the U.S. also have pegged the rate of incidental COVID-positive admissions between 30-40 percent.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the White House, recently told MSNBC that because all hospital admissions are tested for COVID-19, a significant portion are “hospitalized with COVID, as opposed to because of COVID.”
However, even as Omicron leads to a lower rate of hospitalization compared to past variants, the sheer number of patients seeking testing and treatment threatens to overwhelm the system at many facilities across the nation.
The Northeast Georgia Health System, which includes Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, had 262 COVID-19 positive patients in its care as of Monday, according to its website. That number stood at just 78 as of Dec. 25. Northeast Georgia had 19 emergency patients awaiting a bed as of Monday, and 87 of its 91 ICU beds were occupied.
“Hospitalization data is really hard to capture around here,” Badger said. “A bigger majority of our residents go to hospitals in either Georgia or Tennessee. Those numbers are not reported to North Carolina.”
The health system reported 66 percent of its COVID-19 patients as unvaccinated, down from 89 percent on Dec. 17. Public health officials are urging eligible vaccinated individuals to receive a booster dose due to Omicron’s increased rate of breakthrough cases.
The United States has recorded more than 60 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 837,000 deaths since the pandemic began, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.