VALDOSTA — The Lowndes County Health Department general clinic and the Lake Park clinic will be closed Monday following an employee testing positive for COVID-19, according to a South Health District statement.

The district reports the COVID-19 risk to health department patients is “low,” and health department employees who had close contact with the infected employee will quarantine for 14 days from their last interaction with the employee.

The department will contact patients about rescheduling appointments and reopening dates for the clinics will be announced Monday afternoon, according to the statement.

Environmental health services and the Lowndes COVID-19 testing site will remain open and operate its normal hours, read the statement. The hypertension clinic will keep its appointments by telephone, according to the statement, and patients scheduled for a hypertension appointment for Monday will be contacted directly by staff. 

COVID-19 cases in Lowndes rose by 18 Sunday, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health daily status report.

Lowndes County reported 3,360 coronavirus cases Sunday, according to the GDPH report.

At South Georgia Medical Center, 47 COVID-19 patients were being treated at the hospital Sunday, according to the hospital’s daily status report.

So far, 170 Lowndes residents have been hospitalized due to COVID-19, since the start of the outbreak, according to the report.

Fifty Lowndes County residents have died from COVID-19, according to the South Health District. 

The district has performed 24,595 coronavirus tests throughout its 10 counties as of Sunday, according to the district COVID-19 website.

SGMC has discharged 536 COVID-19 patients – numbers reflecting the total patients discharged since the start of the pandemic — and had zero patients waiting for testing results, according to the SGMC report.

Ninety-nine hospital patients have died from the virus since the outbreak of COVID-19, according to the hospital’s report. 

Not all SGMC patients are Lowndes County residents and some patients who have been transferred from other regional hospitals have tested positive for COVID-19, according to past reports.

For more data on Lowndes and the surrounding counties, The Valdosta Daily Times has created a database to track COVID-19 across the South Health District.

To reach the database, click the link here.