The state announced Thursday that 3,756 Jackson County residents have tested positive for COVID-19, an increase of 49 from Wednesday’s total.
The positivity rate for Jackson County is at 16.1%, unchanged from Wednesday’s percentage.
State Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box announced during Gov. Eric Holcomb’s COVID-19 briefing Wednesday afternoon that the state has changed its methodology in calculating positivity rate within counties.
Before Wednesday, the Indiana State Department of Health determined positivity rate by adding each day’s positivity rate for seven days and dividing by seven.
Now, the ISDH will add all positive tests and divide by the total tests done for a given week.
“This will minimize the effect that a high variability and the number of tests done each day can have on the week’s overall positivity, especially in our smaller counties,” Box said.
Due to this new methodology, the state and county positivity rates have retroactively changed. Now, the ISDH’s statistics show the last time Jackson County had a positivity rate below 15% was Nov. 11.
Jackson County is now classified as a level 3 county, meaning a red warning level for COVID-19 spread. An orange level county is classified between 10 and 14.9% with a red level being above 15%. An orange level county is classified as a 2, and a red level county is a 3. If a county’s positivity rate is close to a red level, it’s classified as 2.5.
Positivity rate also is determined by a seven-day moving average with a six-day lag. The reason for the lag is to give time to receive comprehensive results.
The current positivity rate for Jackson County would be for Dec. 18 to 24.
No new deaths attributed to COVID-19 were reported in Jackson County on Thursday, meaning the death toll remains at 43.
There have been 34,479 tests administered to 15,305 individuals in Jackson County since March 18, an increase of 346 from Wednesday’s total.
The latest results were as of 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. The ISDH’s coronavirus dashboard is updated at noon daily.
On Wednesday, 6,543 additional Hoosiers were diagnosed with COVID-19 through testing at the ISDH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and private laboratories.
This brings to 511,485 the total number of Hoosiers known to have had the novel coronavirus following corrections to the previous day’s total.
Indiana’s total number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 is 7,911 with 99 new deaths being reported Thursday.
For the state, a total of 5,681,710 tests have been administered, an increase of 54,672 from Wednesday’s total.