January was the deadliest month for COVID-19 in the region around Chattanooga, even as the pandemic showed signs of slowing in the weeks after Christmas.
A 21-county region including Hamilton County reported 455 deaths in January, passing the previous monthly record of 373 in December.
DeKalb County, Alabama, reported 76 deaths and Bradley County, Tennessee, reported 39 deaths in January, single-month records for both counties. Hamilton County reported 89 deaths, the second-highest single month death toll after 118 people died in December.
Last week, Becky Barnes, administrator for the Hamilton County Health Department, said the actual day a person died might not be the same date the death is reported in the county total. Instead, the county total is updated every time a new report comes in and the actual date of a person's death is recorded in a weekly chart the county publishes on its website.
"The notifications can come to us from a variety of different sources and oftentimes there is a significant lag from when the person died to when we get that report," Barnes said, during a weekly presentation to the county. "We report that death as soon as we get it."
Surges in deaths tend to follow several weeks after a spike in hospitalizations, which often come several weeks after a spike in cases. Hamilton County and other areas saw record increases in the number of hospitalizations after Thanksgiving, with a surge that lasted nearly the entire month of December.
However, the pandemic is showing signs of slowing. Hamilton County is averaging 134 new cases a day in the past week, the lowest that figure has been since Nov. 9. Hospitalizations and patients in the intensive care unit have been decreasing as well. On Monday, the Hamilton County Health Department reported 95 hospitalizations and 28 people in the intensive care unit. The county also reported 1,752 active cases, the lowest total in the county since mid-November.
Counties surrounding Chattanooga are reporting a similar downward trend of infections with weekly new caseloads less than half of what they were in mid-December, during the peak of the surge.
Contact Wyatt Massey at wmassey@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249. Follow him on Twitter @news4mass.