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Free testing still available throughout county

POLK COUNTY—Polk County has had 146 cases of COVID-19, which is an increase of 14 positive cases since July 24.

The county has had 5 deaths from the virus, with 4 of those being from the Saluda zip code and 1, the most recent, being from the Tryon zip code, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

Last week the county added another 4 cases, going from 128 to 132 during the previous week, then added another 14 cases from Friday, July 24 until Tuesday.

Polk County health officials say if a person tests positive multiple times, that person is only counted once in the total case count and also said that positives who relocate outside of the county are not county in Polk’s case count. All cases counted in Polk County reside in the county. People who may be tested in Polk but not live there are counted in their respective counties.

As of Friday, Polk County had a total of 146 cases, with 117 of those persons presumed recovered and 5 deaths. The county has completed 3,255 tests, with 2,974 of those tests being negative. As of Friday, there were 75 tests still pending. Polk County has a percent positive rate of 4.8 percent. Also as of Friday, there were 12 people with the virus from Polk County in the hospital.

Polk County health officials reported that there were 3 current outbreaks with 10 positive cases from outbreaks and zero clusters.

More women in Polk County have tested positive than men, at 60.96 percent female compared to 39.04 percent male.

The age of positives in Polk County has been mostly age 65 and over at almost 60 cases. The next highest age range is 25-49 years old at 40 cases, with about 25 of the cases being in people age 50-64 and a little more than 10 cases each in the 0-17 age group and the 18-24 age group.

As of Tuesday afternoon, North Carolina had 126,532 confirmed cases and completed 1,837,410 tests, according to the NCDHHS.

Buncombe County had 1,715 positive cases with 46 deaths; Henderson County had 1,374 cases with 53 deaths; Rutherford County had 668 cases with 13 deaths and Transylvania County had 128 cases with 1 death, according to the NCDHHS.