EMA Director gives COVID-19 update

Coffee County Emergency Management Agency Director James Brown gave the Coffee County Commission an update on COVID-19 in the area.

According to Brown, Coffee County currently has 313 total confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 60 active cases. That means that more than 80 percent of all COVID-19 patients in the county have recovered. Coffee County has performed a total of 2,941 COVID-19 tests as of June 22.

Brown further put those numbers into context.

“That’s about 6/10 of 1 percent of the (county’s) population,” Brown said. “We would be worried if it all of a sudden spiked up to 3 or 4 percent quickly, but right now it doesn’t seem to be spiking at all.”

Brown said that Coffee County has seen an increase of four new cases per day on average throughout the pandemic. There has still been just one COVID-19 related death in the county, as well. There have been 831 confirmed deaths due to COVID-19 in Alabama with 2,471 hospitalizations.

Brown said that the state as a whole has seen a bit of a spike with younger people being infected with the virus, but no deaths in the young.

“The state is experiencing about 18 deaths per day,” Brown said. “We are seeing a little bit of a spike with cases for some younger people but no spike in deaths for younger people.”

In total, 30,031 Alabamians have tested positive for COVID-19 – out of 348,687 total tests – with 15,974 of those patients having recovered thus far.