EVANSVILLE — Vanderburgh County reported a new one-day record of 10 deaths attributable to COVID-19 Tuesday, according to the Indiana State Department of Health's statewide dashboard of cases.
The new numbers bring Vanderburgh County's coronavirus death toll in one day from 50 to 60. Warrick County also reported a new death due to COVID-19, bringing that county's death count to 64. Posey County reported its sixth coronavirus-related death.
The Vanderburgh County Health Department confirmed Tuesday morning that the report of 10 deaths is correct. The ISDH dashboard has occasionally reported COVID-19 deaths in one county that befell residents of other counties.
The new deaths involve a man, 74; a man, 78; a man, 90; a woman, 85; a man, 73; a woman, 68; a woman, 79; a woman, 92; a man, 90; and a man, 56.
Vanderburgh County also reported 63 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday, bringing the county's total to 5,593 since the first case emerged on March 19. Warrick County added 19 new cases Monday for a total of 1,884; Posey County added five for a total of 679; and Gibson County added eight for a total of 834.
The daily total is relatively low at a time when triple-digit daily case counts in Vanderburgh County are no longer as shocking as they once were. For much of the last two weeks, the county's one-day totals hovered around or above 100.
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Saturday's report of 138 cases came just eight days after another single-day high of 126 cases and four deaths on Oct. 9. Southwestern Indiana and the Tri-State region have been experiencing significantly higher numbers than much of the state. Another 114 cases were reported on Sunday.
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Within the other counties' numbers are trends worth watching.
Warrick County registers 16.7% of its cases in the school-age demographic of young people 0-19 years old. It is the largest single age group designation in Warrick County. People 20-29 years old register the next-highest percentage at 16.0%.
In no other area county do school-age cases rise above all other age groups as a percentage of total cases.
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While Posey County has tested a relatively small number of individuals, 5,433, its seven-day positivity rate for "unique individuals" is the highest in the region at 23.3%. Gibson County is not far behind at 22.8%. Positivity rate is the percentage of people tested who come up positive for COVID-19.
By far the largest county in the region and leading the pack with 5,593 positive cases, Vanderburgh County clocks in with a seven-day positivity rate for unique individuals of 13.8%. Even as reported deaths set a new record Tuesday, this number decreased by nearly a full percentage point from Monday's 14.6%.
All those numbers are higher than medical and health care professionals would like at the moment.
The region remains a hotbed in the state in terms of the rate at which the novel coronavirus, the cause of COVID-19, is spreading. Health officials have expressed concern over the sharp and continued rise of cases and the continued strain on medical resources. The Vanderburgh County Health Board recommended stricter enforcement on gatherings, restaurants and bars, but both city and county officials said they won't go forward with those recommendations.
Due to the rising numbers in Vanderburgh County, Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke earlier this month announced additional restrictions on gatherings that went into effect Monday. The previous mandate was that organizers of any event of 500 or more had to seek approval from the Vanderburgh County Health Department. New restrictions lower that threshold to 125 or more.
Winnecke said this decision came after receiving data from local and state health officials about the spread at local public events. Local events that had multiple cases connected to them included funerals, a wedding and a sporting event.
The county-by-county rating system for quantifying risk is intended in part as a guide for school leaders on whether to keep students in classrooms. ISDH assigns counties scores based on the number of new cases per 100,000 residents and the percentage of positive COVID-19 tests.
Each county is designated a color, given the average of those numbers. The colors range from blue — least community spread — to yellow, orange and red for greater spread. The map is updated weekly, most recently on Wednesday.
In the entire state, Southwestern Indiana counties have had some of the highest weekly cases per 100,000 population.
In Vanderburgh County, the number of cases in the 20-29 age group remains the largest demographic of COVID-19 cases, although that number has been slowly dropping recently. It ticked upward this week to 22.2%.
The school-age demographic of children age 0-19 remains at 14.0% of all cases locally. That number is slightly higher than the state's proportion of cases in the 0-19 age bracket at 13.2%. The number of those aged 30-39 in Vanderburgh County clocks in at 14.9%.
The ISDH dashboard now offers four separate figures for positivity rates. The "unique individuals" positivity rate for Vanderburgh Tuesday was 10.5% cumulatively and the seven-day rate, covering Oct. 7-13, was 13.8%.
The "all tests" positivity rate was 4.8% cumulatively and 7.3% over the same seven-day period.
A total of 53,213 individuals in Vanderburgh County have been tested for COVID-19 since March 11, with 85,297 total tests administered.
The ISDH updates its online dashboard of COVID-19 data daily, including deaths, as it tracks the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
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