Aug. 11—ALBANY — After a decline in COVID-19 patients over the past couple of weeks, numbers have increased slowly again in recent days, with the uptick possibly due to July 4 gatherings.

On Wednesday, 44 patients were hospitalized in Phoebe Putney Health System facilities. Of those, 35 were in Albany, seven in Americus and two in Sylvester, according to a Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital spokesman.

About two weeks ago the number was at 33, Dr. James Black, Phoebe's director of emergency medicine, said.

"We're up and down," he said. "We just came out of the Fourth of July. Now the kids are going back to school. It will be interesting to see what happens.

"We started a down trend for a couple of weeks in a row, but we didn't want to celebrate too early."

The number of patients being treated in an intensive care unit also climbed, from two a couple of weeks ago to seven on Wednesday.

As has been the experience since vaccines became available, those who have been vaccinated tend to have less severe cases, Black said. Vaccinated hospital patients also generally tend to be sick for a shorter time period.

"We've compared those side-by-side, those who are vaccinated and those who are not," he said. "The other thing we want everybody to keep in mind, even though numbers are down (from earlier spikes) and cases are not as severe, we're not out of the woods yet. It's still out there, and it's still highly contagious.

"We're appreciative of when numbers go down and concerned when they go up."

The physician reminded the public to continue taking measures to prevent infections and spreading the disease.

One trend doctors say they have noticed is that when case numbers go up, more individuals seem to don face masks.

Over the week that ended Aug. 7, Dougherty County has averaged 31.1 daily cases, or the equivalent 34.3 cases per 100,000 residents, according to numbers compiled by The Mayo Clinic. Decatur County had the highest case numbers in the region, averaging 12 per day or 44.7 cases per 100,000.

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