Washington County had its single-day highest case count for new COVID-19 confirmed cases on Wednesday. In Thursday’s Washington County Board of Health meeting Public Health Director Danielle Pettit-Majewski said there’s been a recent increase in confirmed cases locally, “Yesterday was actually the largest number of cases we’ve gotten in a single day since we started. We had 20 cases yesterday that we worked through. And that won’t be reflected on the website because not all of them get entered in on the same day that we find out about them. Sometimes like they test positive one day, we don’t get them in our system until a day or two later. I think before that the highest we’d gotten in one day was 14.”

Since last Friday there have been 34 new confirmed cases in the county, and during the same time period the 14-day positivity rate went from 6% to 8%. Pettit-Majewski said they’re seeing more young people contracting the virus, people between the ages of five and 30-years-old. She said with that comes more people in quarantine because they have more contacts. As of Thursday, Washington County has had 414 confirmed cases, 11 deaths, and 325 people have recovered for a local recovery rate of 78.5%.

People are still encouraged to wash their hands frequently with soap and water, practice six feet of social distance, and wear a mask in public to help prevent the spread of the virus. Statewide as of Thursday, Iowa has had 76,975 confirmed cases, 1,248 deaths, and 55,776 people have recovered, for a recovery rate of 72.4%.