AUGUSTA, Ga. – Across Georgia, there’s been a decrease in COVID-19 cases. In our area, the daily average dropped from 177 cases in the beginning of January to 74, however, that doesn’t mean it’s time to let your guard down.
A lower amount of positive cases is all we’ve been wanting, but with the good comes the bad… and because the virus has been around for a while, we now have to look out for variants.
These occur when the virus mutates. Augusta University Health’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Phillip Coule, says without the new variants he was optimistic, but this is just all part of the battle with COVID-19 and the future remains unknown.
“This virus doesn’t mutate on it’s own sitting on a surface. This virus mutates in living creatures, whether that is a human, which we believe these mutations occur,” says Dr. Coule.
Variants mutate in living beings, not on it’s own, so it’s important to continue to do what we can to lower that number even more.
Dr. Coule says that he’s optimistic that we won’t peak as high as we did before, but these new variants will be another battle.
“We don’t yet fully understand the new variants in terms of their impact, their transmissibility, how much of this recent spike is potentially caused by the new variants. We don’t know all of the answers to those questions, yet,” Dr. Coule.
So, we need to do just as we are doing: wear a mask, wash our hands, keep a distance, and get vaccinated to reduce the risk of mutations as well as positive cases.
