For the first time since March, Dougherty County marks a week without a COVID-19 death

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    Dougherty County, GA (Albany Herald) — After weeks of bad news, Dougherty County has something to celebrate. Officials at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital announced Friday there have been no COVID-19 deaths in a week and the hospital had no new admissions of patients with the disease in the last 24 hours.

As of Wednesday, Phoebe had no coronavirus patients in its main hospital, with all virus patients now at the temporary unit at the Phoebe North site on Palmyra Road, Dr. Steven Kitchen, Phoebe’s chief medical officer, said during a news conference.

“These trends continue to be favorable and continue to (show) that the impact of the virus in our community continues to diminish,” Kitchen said. “We have today reached several significant milestones. For the first time since this worldwide nightmare and pandemic began, over the last 24 hours we have had no patients admitted with COVID-19. We’re at a historic low in terms of patients with COVID-19.”

With no coronavirus patients in the main hospital’s 38 intensive care unit beds, staff conducted a thorough disinfection of areas where COVID-19 patients had been housed.

The hospital also will begin allowing more patient visitation, with some restrictions remaining in place.

A total of 149 Dougherty County residents who tested positive for the coronavirus have died, Dougherty County Coroner Michael Fowler said, but there have been no deaths over the past week. It was the first week without a death since the crisis began.

Those trends are encouraging as the community moves forward, Dougherty County Commission Chairman Chris Cohilas said.

“This community — Albany and Dougherty County — has performed in a tremendous fashion,” he said. “We were literally No. 3 in the world in terms of per-capita cases. For the past seven days, we have not lost a life. That is something to be thankful for.”

As the county did through tornadoes, a strong tropical storm that led to a 500-year flood and a hurricane, it has weathered the storm, Cohilas said.

In the near future, the county, along with the Albany City Commission and Dougherty County School Board, plans to partner to provide antibody testing to determine how many residents have been exposed to the virus, some without ever knowing it, Cohilas said.

Th testing will help determine the extent of the “herd immunity” that the community has developed, he said. That, in turn, will allow people to feel more comfortable returning to a more normal life.

“We can’t continue to be paralyzed in fear,” Cohilas said. “We had a horrific set of circumstances. Overall we’ve done a darned good job.”

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