ROCKINGHAM — The Richmond County Health Department on Monday morning announced two more COVID-related deaths, making January the deadliest month from the coronavirus since the pandemic began.
According to the Health Department, both individuals died within the past 24 hours.
So far, there have been 69 COVID-related deaths since April 2020. Sixteen have died this month. There were also 15 to pass away in October and 13 in December.
Judging from previous reports, it appears that one of the recent deaths occurred in a hospital and the other in another type of healthcare facility.
According to the latest press release, 49 residents have died in a hospital, 16 in a healthcare facility and four outside of a health setting.
The race and gender breakdown is as follows: 13 African American females, 11 African American males, one “other race” female, one “other race,” male, one Hispanic female, two American Indian males, 22 Caucasian females and 18 Caucasian males.
All patients have been between the ages of 31 and 95: 21 have been 80 or older; 21 have been in their 70s; 18 in their 60s; eight in their 50s; and one who was 31.
It appears both residents were African American males; one was 80 years old or older, the other was in his 60s.
There have been 8,695 COVID-related deaths across the state, as of Jan. 24, according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. Of those, 495 have been since Jan. 20. Monday’s statistics have not yet been released as of this writing.
According to Johns Hopkins University, there have been 419,228 COVID-related deaths in the U.S. and 2,131,166 globally.
Overall case numbers around the world are approaching 100 million, according to JHU.
As of Jan. 22, there were 453 active cases in Richmond County, including 25 hospitalizations.
DHHS announced Saturday that the first case of the COVID-19 variant called B.1.1.7, first identified in the United Kingdom last month, was detected in a sample collected in Mecklenburg County.
