Indiana has once again shattered its record for the single-day increase of COVID-19 cases. Another 2,328 cases were added to the state’s total in Friday’s update from the Indiana Department of Health, the first time that number has surpassed 2,000.
State health officials say that does include a backlog of about 300 cases whose reporting was delayed due to a technical issue, but the state would still likely have broken its record without them. That brings the state’s total to almost 143,500.
Washington County continues to see a steady daily increase with 17 new Covid-19 cases today, according to the Indiana State Department of Health — a new record since the pandemic was first announced in the US earlier this year.
In the past 15 days, Washington County has had 67 new cases of Covid-19, which is the largest 15-day increase since numbers were recorded in March.
Here’s a breakdown:
- March 1-15 – 18 cases
- April 1-15 – 9 cases
- May 1-15 – 10 cases
- June 1-15 – 9 cases
- July 1-15 – 12 cases
- August 1-15 – 46 cases
- September 1-15 – 21 cases
- October 1-15 – 67 cases
The state began opening back up in July and school was able to begin in-person instruction in August, which led to increased cases around Indiana.
There are more than 1,300 COVID-19 patients in Indiana’s hospitals, according to the state’s latest statistics, and just over 32 percent of the state’s intensive care beds are currently available.
Another 22 Hoosiers have died from COVID-19, bringing the total to 3,654.
The research institute updates its coronavirus data on an online portal daily and offers a two-week summary of trends for the state and all 92 Indiana counties.
The most current trends are not promising.
Over the summer, the vast majority of counties in Indiana were showing decreased cases of COVID-19. Counties with decreasing cases are highlighted in green on a statewide map.
Now, nearly all counties in the state are marked either in red, showing a 2-week trend of increased COVID-19 cases, or they are marked with a red asterisk which signifies early warning signs of increased COVID-19 activity.
Heading into this weekend, only eight of Indiana’s 92 counties show a decreased number of cases without early warning signs of a future COVID spike, according to Regenstrief’s data.
“The fact that cases are going up in the fall is not surprising,” Grannis said. “As it gets colder, people tend to congregate indoors more, and so that distancing tends to be challenged. And so I think we need to be even more vigilant about how we think about mitigating the spread here. We have to be able to maintain that distancing.”
It’s not just the number of positive cases that are climbing across Indiana.
Regenstrief says the number of emergency room visits and hospital admissions is also increasing statewide – a troubling trend for health care professionals who worry a fall COVID-19 surge will overwhelm emergency rooms.
Public health officials are also closely tracking the COVID-19 positivity rate (the percentage of total COVID-19 tests that result in a positive diagnosis).
