By John Estridge from ISDH data
EDITORIAL COMMENT: About a week ago, the numbers from the Indiana State Department of Health website, showing the daily update, had Fayette County’s total of positive test results shooting up beyond 500 while the daily positive test results were miniscule. The ISDH later took that number down and replaced it with what may be the correct number, at least it made sense mathematically.
Today, Wednesday, October 7, the ISDH’s daily report has the number of Fayette County positive test results increasing by 36. That seems like a really large number since when there was an outbreak in Fayette County in August or early September, that number was going up only 11 or 13 a day.
However, the Fayette County Health Board has nothing on its Facebook page disparaging the amount or saying there is a major problem in the county. That department just did a screen shot of the ISDH page, which is what the Fayette County Health Board does every day on its Facebook page.
To make matters even more bizarre, the state has gone to a color-coded method where the color blue is what everyone should be shooting for as it is reserved for the counties with the best COVID-19 numbers, meaning the fewest with positive test results and the fewest deaths. Fayette County is a blue county and it is updated on Wednesdays, meaning the day of the bad number.
So, this is the end of the Editorial Comment and on to reporting the facts … maybe.
According to the Indiana State Department of Health numbers published on Wednesday, October 7, Fayette County’s number of positive test results ballooned by 36 to 468. Even with that huge increase of more than 8 percent in one day, the state still puts Fayette County as a blue county in its new color-grading matrix, meaning it is one of the best counties in Indiana for good COVID-19 numbers. Good does not mean going up dramatically but good as in few new cases.
And beyond all that, part of the state totals show how many people have been newly tested and that number for Fayette County is 114. Now that means that of the 114 people taking the test, 31 percent tested positive.
Franklin County is reported to have one additional positive test result, making its total at 320. Union County did not have any, keeping its total at 82.
There were no additional deaths in the three counties with the totals for each county remaining: Franklin, 25; Fayette, 14; and Union, zero.
For the state, there were 1,302 additional positive test results, making that total 128,227. And there were 37 additional deaths attributed to COVID-19, which makes that total 3,500.