COVID-19 Update

The Columbia County Department of Health has released its numbers for today. Since yesterday, there have been 30 new cases of COVID-19 and 44 recoveries, reducing the number of active cases by fourteen to 119. Eleven county residents are hospitalized with the virus, but none is in the ICU. There have been no new deaths from COVID-19 in Columbia County since Tuesday, December 15.

Since the number of test results received was not published yesterday, we will calculate the positivity rate for the past two days based on the total cases and the PCR tests reported on December 16 and today. Those numbers indicate 64 positives out of 161 test results for a whopping 40 percent positivity rate. We can only hope the CCDOH got its numbers wrong somewhere along the line. Using the numbers provided by the CCDOH, the seven day average is 6.5 percent. 

The New York Forward dashboard, however, reports the positivity rate for Columbia County was 4.4 percent in the past 24 hours and 4.2 percent for the seven day average. It is now the eighth day that Columbia County has had a seven day average positivity rate of more than 3 percent.