The Columbia County Department of Health has announced three COVID-19 testing clinics for the month of October at the former John L. Edwards School at Fourth and State streets. The clinics are limited to 100 tests. Pre-registration is not required. A form of photo identification is needed, and masks are required for entry. The clinics will be held from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. on the following days:

• Tuesday, October 13
• Tuesday, October 20
• Tuesday, October 27

The testing kits used at these clinics, which involve nasopharyngeal swabs, were purchased by Columbia County with the help of private donations.

The Columbia County Department of Health released its numbers at 11:00 a.m. today. Since yesterday, there have been no new cases of COVID-19 and no new recoveries, so the number of active cases in the county remains the same at fourteen. One person remains hospitalized, and one is in the ICU. One more county resident is in mandatory quarantine today than yesterday, but the number in precautionary quarantine remains the same at one. It has now been 117 consecutive days since there has been a death from COVID-19 in Columbia County.

With no positives out of 304 test results received, the percentage positive rate for today is 0.0 percent. Inthe past week, Monday through Sunday, there have been thirteen new cases out of 1,946 test results received, making the percentage positive rate for the week 0.6 percent.