After several months of single-digit active COVID case numbers, Hart County has seen an increase in cases, while neighboring Franklin County is enduring a spike.
On June 9, Hart County had 10 confirmed COVID cases in one day, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health. Hart County had another spike the next week with six cases on June 16.
As of July 20, Hart County had 18 active COVID cases. Neighboring Franklin County, had a higher concentration of cases than anywhere else in northeast Georgia with 56 active cases. The test positivity rate was 3.2 percent for Hart County between June 28 and July 12.
“There is a rise in Georgia and Hart County,” said Ruth Tellano-Daniel, a nurse practitioner in the emergency room at St. Mary’s Sacred Heart and Hartwell resident.
Hart County’s confirmed COVID death tally has also increased to 40 with 17 other deaths being listed as probable.
Tellano-Daniel was helping administer vaccines at Flat Shoals Baptist Church until the end of May.
“We weren’t seeing very many by that time so they moved everything back to the health department.” Tellano-Daniel said.
In Hart County, 7,738, or 30 percent, of residents have been fully vaccinated as of July 19.
The low vaccination rates have Tellano-Daniel concerned about the Delta variant, a variant of COVID-19 that spreads about 225 percent faster than the original version of the virus because it leaves those infected with about 1,000 times more copies of the virus in the respiratory tracts, according to researchers at Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“When it gets here, it can really cause a problem,” Tellano-Daniel said. “If you have a thousand times more virus, every time you cough or breath on someone the viral load is way higher so you can catch it easier.”
Daniel said she hasn’t personally seen a fully-vaccinated person hospitalized with COVID.
“It seems like the vaccine really prevents people, first of all, from catching it and second of all, from getting severely sick,” Tellano-Daniel said.
She also said the biggest problem is people with no symptoms can give the virus to someone who is more vunerable to the virus.
Daniel said a distant family member of hers got COVID and passed it along to the woman’s grandmother, who died from the virus about a month ago.
“There are plenty of vaccines available where they were. They just thought they were fine,” Tellano-Daniel said. “Now this young lady is dealing with all the guilt because she brought it home to her grandmother.”
Another problem with the virus spreading among unvaccinated people is that every time the virus spreads, there is a chance for it to mutate into a more dangerous variant.
“Even if you will be ok, it will save all of us a lot of problems,” Tellano-Daniel said.