COVID-19 cases continued to soar in Milam County during the past week. Wednesday morning’s cumulative total was 260, compared to 191 last Wednesday, an increase of 36 percent.
Active cases went up, then down during the week, ending at 45, a decline of 10 over last Wednesday (55). During the week active cases climbed to 61 before heading downward.
Milam’s single day case count record was broken twice during the week, logging 14 on Thursday, then breaking that mark with 17 on Monday.
On Tuesday five nursing home cases were removed from the Milam County count due to testing errors. Tuesday’s increase would have been eight cases. Removals made it a net three.
ZIP CODES—On Friday, the Milam County Health Department released another COVID-19 chart, tracking the residences of Milam residents who have tested positive for the potentially deadly disease by zip code. It generally showed the same trends as the previous chart, issued June 23, but this one was even more-so.
The Cameron area 76520 zip code went from 44 percent to 54 percent of the cumulative cases diagnosed since the first virus tests in March.
Rockdale stayed at 29 percent. That means an overwhelming 83 percent of all COVID-19 positive tests of Milam County residents have been from the zip codes containing its two largest cities.
Cameron’s was the only zip code to record an increase during the period. Milam’s other zip codes’ percentages either stayed the same or declined.
The figures noted in this story, and on the chart above, only represent cases diagnosed Friday and before. There have been a substantial number diagnosed since that date.
AGE GROUPS—Zip codes were not the only statistics released during the past by the Milam Health Department.
Also Friday, the department released a graph showing positive COVID-19 cases by age. Those figures showed Milam following the surprising trend revealed by numbers released in June.
Half the cases diagnosed in Milam (49.5 percent) come from persons between the ages of 20 and 49.
Only 14-percent are in the 60-and above bracket, which is said by virus experts to be the most vulnerable.
At least two cases have been recorded in every 10-year grouping, ranging from 0-9 to 90-99.
POSITIVITY RATE—On Monday, the department released more “positivity rate” figures for Milam.
Those represent the percentage of persons testing positive for the virus, compared to the number of tests administered.
As with previous figures, the positivity rate showed wild swings. From July 7-17 it was 39.17 percent. That increase came after a rate of just 16.68 percent July 4-10. (That’s close to the cumulative Texas average).
For June 27-July 3, a week with the lowest testing level of the six reflected in the survey, it was 48.57 percent.
The week of June 20-26 reflected a 16.54 rate, it was 4.48 percent from June 13-19 and 2.80 percent from June 6-12.
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