Public health report confirms first virus death in Hart County

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  • The Hartwell Sun
    The Hartwell Sun
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The death of a Hart County man due to COVID-19 has been confirmed by the Department of Public Health, marking Hart County’s first death from the virus to be officially reported as the number of infections continues to grow.

Hart County saw it’s first death from the novel coronavirus reported after press deadline Wednesday afternoon in the DPH’s daily status report.

A previous report published by the Department of Community Health on July 24 showed a resident at Hart Care Center died from the virus. It is unclear whether the death reported there is the same reported by the DPH.

The death reported from the DPH shows a 62-year-old man died with COVID-19 and had no comorbidity, or other factors in his death.

The number of cumulative cases in Hart County has grown significantly in the past few weeks, adding 103 new cases in the past two weeks, according to the DPH. The county has seen a total of 230 cases as of July 30, 34 hospitalizations and one death from the virus since the DPH began tracking the data in March.

Hart County administrator and emergency management director Terrell Partain said as of Wednesday morning there are 39 active cases of the virus in Hart County.

There are five critical care beds available out of 70 total in a 12-county region which includes Hart County, according to a Wednesday report from the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security agency. The report shows 85 emergency room beds are available in the region and 73 general inpatient beds are available.

About 87 percent of critical care beds statewide are in use, according to GEMA’s report.

Statewide, there are 178,323 confirmed cases, 3,642 deaths, 17,964 hospitalizations and 3,301 ICU admissions attributed to the virus, according to the DPH’s status report on Wednesday.