By John Estridge from ISDH data
There are several negative aspects to the daily COVID-19-related numbers released Wednesday, December 9, regarding the Whitewater Valley and the state.
Franklin County went back to a red designation after one week as an orange county. While Fayette and Union counties remained orange, the next to worst classification with red being the worst, the scores of those counties are each 2.5. Three point zero is the red classification. Orange levels can go down to a 2.0.
Scores are based on a formula derived by the Indiana State Department of Health.
And it was announced Indiana has the highest per capita number of positive test results in the country since Thanksgiving.
According to an article on the Indianapolis Channel 59 website, Indiana has a daily average of 1,025 cases per 1 million people from November 30 to December 6. It is called the post-Thanksgiving surge. Also, reported in a separate article on the same website is Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb has ordered hospitals in the state to “postpone or reschedule all non-emergency inpatient elective procedures for three weeks, as well as imposing new social gathering restrictions.” This will be enforced for the next three weeks.
In the same article, Holcomb described the state as “being on fire,” looking at all the red counties on the state’s map of all 92 counties.
Locally, Fayette County had the largest number of new positive test results with 27, bringing that county’s total to 1,794. Franklin County added 20 more for 910. And Union County had five additional positive test results for 327.
None of the three counties added any virus-related deaths. Those numbers remain: Fayette, 41; Franklin, 27; and Union, two.
Indiana recorded 5,835 new positive test results for a total of 398,417. And there were 98 deaths attributed to COVID-19 for a total of 6,207 deaths.
