The COVID-19 toll in Hall County continued to climb Tuesday, with 61 more confirmed cases and three additional deaths in the past four days, bringing the Grand Island area's total number of lives claimed by the virus to 12.
The Central District Health Department reported a man in his 70s died Saturday, a man in his 90s died Monday and a woman in her 70s died Tuesday.
As of 2 p.m. Tuesday, the department reported 560 lab-confirmed cases for Nebraska’s fourth-largest county, or more than a third of the state’s overall 1,648 cases. The district — which also serves Hamilton and Merrick counties — reported a total of 590 confirmed cases.
By comparison, Omaha’s Douglas County — with a population nearly nine times larger — reported 305 confirmed cases and 14 deaths as of Tuesday. Four of those deaths — all men in their 60s and 70s, all with underlying health conditions — were newly reported.
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Health officials expect the Grand Island-area numbers to get worse in the next seven to 10 days, they said in a news release. And they called the virus widespread in the community. Of the positive cases, 39% are connected to the JBS beef plant — meaning that when the patients were interviewed, they confirmed they worked at the plant.
That leaves hundreds of cases with no clear contamination point.
“Since our first cases were known to be community spread (without a close contact and without travel), it is virtually impossible to identify a source of infection by the virus,†they said in the release.