Local COVID-19 cases recover, county still testing

For the first time since March 24, Young County has no confirmed active cases of COVID-19, as the county now shows zero home or hospitalized, with five recovered from the virus.

On Tuesday April 21, Graham Regional Medical Center posted their daily numbers, which showed that the final two patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 had recovered. Young County had six total cases test positive for the virus, now have five recovered and one death.

The single death was a man who traveled by vehicle from New York to Olney. He died on April 10, and was later confirmed to be positive for COVID-19. The man is presumed to have died from COVID-19, according to Young County Local Health Authority Dr. Pat Martin.

In an previous article by The Graham Leader, Martin said the man came from New York to be with his family in Olney and was sick and tested at one of the medical facilities because of his illness.

“His body was sent for an autopsy, so the cause of death will be determined by a coroner, but we believe it was from COVID,” Martin said previously to The Graham Leader. “That is the diagnosis we are going by.”

Martin said he believed the man did not contract COVID-19 in Olney, but brought it with him on his drive from New York to Olney.

The other five cases all were able to recover at home, based on data from GRMC. Testing for cases is still ongoing, so numbers may change in terms of cases tested positive.

Dr. Martin discussed some of the new testing on Friday, April 17. He explained that this was a new way to test for COVID-19.

“It is a blood test. It tests immunoglobulins. There are two different immunoglobulins that are tested, IGG and IGM, and this test can result rapidly in 10 minutes and a positive IGM level means that you are actively infected and a positive IGG level can tell you people that maybe had it several weeks or months ago. And so it will be a way that we can tell people that might have had it and not realized they had, so that’s going to be very helpful,” Martin said in the meeting. “In Young County, we do have these tests available. We have a very limited number right now. We ordered more tests. The whole country I think is hoping that that test will make it a lot easier to tell who had and has not had this infection. And that will let us know if we are starting to develop a little bit of herd immunity and that will help everyone return back to normal.”

GRMC will continue to provide updates on testing numbers daily on Facebook.