Increased COVID-19 testing of Jackson County residents has led to a considerable increase in the positive cases in recent days, a local health official said Friday.

A total of 251 Jackson County residents have tested positive through midnight, an increase of 32 from Wednesday’s total. There also were 32 new cases reported Tuesday.

Per 10,000 residents, Jackson County is averaging 56.7 positive cases. For comparison, Marion County leads the state with more than 7,078 positive cases and is averaging 73.4 positive cases per 10,000 residents. Jackson County’s death rate per 10,000 is 0.2, while Marion County’s death rate per 10,000 is 5.2, and Bartholomew County’s rate is 2.6.

The increase in COVID-19 cases here is due in part to increased testing at three testing sites in Seymour and a Scott County factory.

Dr. Christopher Bunce, public health officer for the Jackson County Health Department and an infectious disease specialist at Schneck Medical Center in Seymour, said Friday the county’s positive case numbers have increased significantly due to testing at a factory in Scott County.

“We got a whole bunch of new cases and have been working hard with case contacts,” he said.

Jackson County’s testing sites are at Schneck Medical Center, First Care Urgent Care and Seymour High School. The latter site, however, is closing today. A new testing site will be coming next week at Seymour Christian Church, 915 Kasting Road. The times and dates will be announced when they become available.

Bunce also said results of the tests {span}are shared with the patient, the Indiana State Department of Health and county health department.

The state announced Friday that 675 additional Hoosiers statewide have been diagnosed with COVID-19 through testing at ISDH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and private laboratories.

That brings the total number of Hoosiers known to have the novel coronavirus to 23,146 following corrections to the previous day’s total.

Intensive care unit and ventilator capacity remains steady. Nearly 40%of ICU beds and more than 81% of ventilators were available as of noon Friday.

A total of 1,328 Hoosiers have been confirmed to have died of COVID-19, an increase of 33 over the previous day. One resident of Jackson County has died as a result of COVID-19 at this time.

Another 119 probable deaths have been reported based on clinical diagnoses in patients for whom no positive test is on record. Deaths are reported based on when data are received by ISDH and occurred over multiple days.

To date, 130,128 tests, including 948 in Jackson County, have been reported to the state. The statewide count is up from 124,782 on Thursday.

While positive cases are up, initial unemployment claims have begun to decrease.

In the week ending April 18, there were 847 initial unemployment claims filed in Jackson County. This is down from 1,317 initial claims in the week ending April 11. Of those 847 claims, 558 were from manufacturing employees.