COVID-19 outbreak due to highly-contagious variant prompts Cherokee County senior center to close
A senior activity center in Cherokee County has decided to temporarily close after a number of people attending the facility tested positive for COVID-19.
Channel 2′s Tom Regan was at the Cherokee Senior Center, where the facility has seen a rapid rise in cases just in the last 24 hours.
“Just yesterday, we had one,” Senior Service Director Tim Morris said. “And then it got up to 10. So it was a quick decision I made yesterday to close. I felt like we needed to do everything we could to keep everyone safe.”
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On Thursday, the dining room, which would normally be bustling with dozens of older adults eating, socializing and having fun, was empty.
Morris said the facility had strict virus protocols in place and rode through other COVID-19 variants, including beta, delta and omicron, without a problem. But the omicron offshoot, the BA.5 variant, has taken contagion to a whole new level.
“We have more with this than anything prior to that,” Morrison said.
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Ashley Deverell, the infectious disease director of the Northeast Georgia Health District, said the new variant appears to be more contagious than past COVID-19 offshoots. Over 720 new cases of COVID-19 have been documented in Cherokee County in the past two weeks.
Luckily, most cases produce just minor illnesses.
“We are seeing a little bit of an increase in hospitalizations, but not what we have seen with other intense surges,” Deverell said.
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The senior center hopes to reopen later this month if there are no additional COVID-19 cases. For now, they are playing it safe.
