VALDOSTA – Lowndes County COVID-19 numbers continue to yo-yo as the number listed for most of Monday fell by one Tuesday afternoon.

Monday afternoon and evening, the Georgia Department of Public Health reported Lowndes County having 208 cases. But in the 1 p.m. Tuesday report, Lowndes County only has 207 reported cases.

It is the latest in a series of similar number decreases for Lowndes County in the past week. Health officials say the decrease is typically due to human error – a person keying in the wrong number for the county.

But for the past day, the state website also reports five COVID-19 deaths in Lowndes County while the South Health District reports Lowndes remains at only four deaths.

The GDPH publishes the number of hospitalizations of each county’s residents. Forty Lowndes residents have been hospitalized due to COVID-19, according to the report.

The additional information should not be confused with the hospitalization numbers published daily by South Georgia Medical Center. 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.

SGMC was treating nine confirmed COVID-19 patients Tuesday, according to its daily report.

The hospital had discharged 60 COVID-19 patients and had seven patients waiting for testing results, according to the report. 

Fourteen SGMC patients have died from the coronavirus. Again, not all SGMC patients are Lowndes County residents.

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.