VALDOSTA – COVID-19-related hospital admissions remain in the single digits, South Georgia Medical Center reported Wednesday.

The hospital had seven COVID-19 patients mid-week with one of the patients on a ventilator, said Brian Dawson, Chief Medical Officer. This is a small spike from the April 8 report, which confirmed that SGMC had no virus-related patients for the first time in two years, since March 17, 2020.

Dawson said as far as the country goes, there are some areas that are noticing slight increases, but personal protective equipment as well as advancements in care are keeping numbers low.

“I think with some of the things we have available to us now, which includes the vaccinations and a medication called Paxlovid, an oral antiviral pill used to treat COVID-19, has given us some redundancy as far as treatments go,” he said during the monthly meeting of the Hospital Authority of Valdosta-Lowndes County.

SGMC faced a record high of 113 virus patients hospitalized Aug. 22, 2021, during the delta variant surge.

SGMC had reported a low single digit number of COVID-19 patients during Christmas 2021 rising to the triple digits during the first few weeks of the new year, totaling out to 112 patients during the omnicron surge.

The COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. hit the 1 million mark May 4. Dawson said while treatments are improving, the virus is still the third-leading cause of death in the country. When Randy Smith, SGMC chief operating officer, asked if current patients are being treated with certain antibodies to help fight infection, Dawson responded they’re used for outpatient treatment.

“We’ve had several different formulations of this monoclonal antibody because we have one that’s resisting and that continues to shift. Here lately, a lot of our patients were seen as outpatients, and I think we’ve been able to get fairly good treatment with some of our more conservative measures as well as Paxlovid,” he said.

According to the Georgia Department of Public Health, Lowndes County has reported 15,393 cases of coronavirus since the pandemic. Virus-related death toll remains at 281.

Statewide, Georgia has reported more than 1,970,000 cases and more than 31,700 virus-related deaths since the start of the pandemic.