For 18 consecutive days — since May 20 — Fayette County has recorded that fewer than 1 person out of a hundred has been diagnosed with Covid-19 over 2-week periods of testing. That’s a rate of under 1% for more than 2 weeks of testing, according to data from the Georgia Department of Public Health.
In that same time period, Fayette’s daily new cases number has been in the low single digits most days.
One probable cause: widespread vaccinations against the coronavirus. Nearly half — 47% or 52,904 — the county’s population has received at least one dose of vaccine that protects against infection with Covid.
As of June 6, DPH says 41% of residents are fully vaccinated. That’s 46,222 Fayette residents. In all, shot-givers have injected at least 97,124 doses of vaccines to persons in Fayette.
Fayette’s 2-week positive test rate on Sunday was 0.4% — that’s less than 1 infected person out of every 200 persons tested. At least in Fayette, the pandemic is no longer so “pan” or widespread.
So far since March 2020, 160 Fayette residents have died of the infection, 5 in the past 18 days, according to DPH figures. DPH estimates that another 16 Fayette residents were additional Covid victims, although their causes of death might have been labeled otherwise. Click here for the complete list provided by DPH.
The county has recorded 6,794 Covid cases since the start of the pandemic, and admitted 274 persons to hospital treatment.
For comparison, the state of Georgia’s 2-week infection rate has fallen to 2.3%. The state total case number is approaching 900,000, but the daily new case numbers are under 500 — 199 new cases across Georgia on June 6, DPH reports.