Positive case numbers as of January 4th, 2021.

Two COVID-19 related deaths have been added in about the last week for Washington County, while its 14-day average positivity rate has risen above 15% for the first time in a month as of Tuesday.

The state coronavirus dashboard shows that Washington County has 29 COVID-19 deaths, with 1,962 cases and 1,558 recoveries. County Public Health Administrator Danielle Pettit-Majewski tells KCII that the county saw clusters of new cases linked with gatherings held over Thanksgiving, and she expects to see clusters of cases linked to Christmas gatherings forthcoming, “We know that at this time, between the holidays we’ve had testing facilities close, we’ve had clinics close, we’ve had people at IDPH on vacation, plus over the weekend. So we’ve actually seen some delays in our reporting. So we know about several cases that haven’t actually come through yet, so they haven’t been counted, so I’m kind of waiting for some of those cases to start to catch up to the cases that we know that are out there.”

Washington County’s 14 day average positivity rate increased from 13.5 to 15.7% as of Tuesday morning. For its contiguous counties, Louisa and Jefferson counties are tied for having the highest rate with 20.2%, and Iowa County had the lowest percentage of the state overall with 7.1%. Henry and Keokuk counties also added two deaths in the last week, with 28 and 25 total deaths, respectively. You can hear more from Pettit-Majewski in the second half of a two-part Halcyon House Washington Page on air and at kciiradio.com.