More than 100 Limestone County residents have now tested positive for COVID-19 since March 13, with nearly half of them testing positive in the last two weeks.

Limestone County was home to one of the first cases in Alabama, and it took 11 days for a second case to be confirmed. Now, in the same amount of time, the county has jumped from 69 cases on May 22 to 108 on Monday, with another two listed as “probable” cases, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health.

However, as scary as that might sound, an infection preventionist at Athens-Limestone Hospital said it’s not that concerning.

“I don’t think it’s alarming that you’re seeing more (cases). I would expect more,” said Mona Skipworth.

Skipworth, a registered nurse certified in infection control, has spent the last five years of her career focused on infection control and prevention. While the coronavirus pandemic is as new and unprecedented for her as it is any other health care professional, she said the rise here is largely from additional testing and not a major outbreak.

Nine of the new cases were from the 250 people tested at a recent event hosted by ALH and the Limestone County chapter of the NAACP, she said.

Athens City Councilman Frank Travis said during the council’s meeting Friday of those nine positive cases, six were asymptomatic.

Now that asymptomatic patients are being tested, Skipworth said, case numbers will continue to rise.

Meanwhile, ALH has not seen any new hospitalizations from the disease, Skipworth said. A section of the hospital’s intensive care unit designated solely for the care of COVID-19 patients was thoroughly sanitized and reopened to ICU patients last week, and the hospital’s COVID-19 medical response team was pretty much disbanded.

Still, Skipworth said the hospital holds conference calls each day so employees can voice concerns and discuss issues, including those related to COVID-19. The team and the unit can be reinstated at a moment’s notice if needed, she said.

She advised the public to continue following ADPH guidelines, such as washing one’s hands regularly, maintaining social distancing and covering one’s mouth when coughing or sneezing.

“We’re still under the safer-at-home guidelines,” Skipworth said. “… Those things that ADPH recommends are what we still need to be doing.”

Monday’s numbers

According to ADPH, there have been more than 18,000 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 across the state since March 13. Another 288 are considered “probable” but unconfirmed cases. Two deaths remain under investigation, while 644 are confirmed by ADPH.

Of the 18,020 who have been confirmed positive, ADPH reported 591 have required an ICU stay and 355 have needed a ventilator. Residents in long-term care facilities in Alabama account for 1,695 of the cumulative total, while long-term care employees account for 1,031 cases and 2,253 of the cases were health care workers.

State health officer Dr. Scott Harris has repeatedly said he focuses on the percentage of people who test positive, not just the number of positive tests, when discussing changes to state health orders. According to ADPH data, those percentages were on a decline even as individual case numbers rose, dropping from 12.8% in mid-April to 9% for the week of May 3–9. However, data for the week of May 10–16 showed an increase to 9.5%, and data for May 17–28 showed 12.2% of tests across Alabama came back positive for COVID-19.

Numbers for Limestone County specifically were not available, though ADPH reported there were 782 tests in the county the last 14 days and 43, or 5.5%, were positive.