Liz Copan / ecopan@summitdaily.com
DILLON — Summit County reported seven additional positive cases of the new coronavirus Tuesday, bringing the county’s total to 26.
A total of 122 individuals have been tested in Summit County, according to the most recent update on the county’s novel coronavirus webpage. There have been 69 negative tests and 25 are still pending.
County spokesperson Julie Sutor said residents shouldn’t expect the number of positive, negative and pending tests to match up to the total number each day.
The county is including some untested but epidemiologically linked cases in the positive case count. Those are people who are exhibiting strong COVID-19 symptoms and had known close contact with someone who tested positive. Additionally, while pending cases will appear in the data of the county that tested an individual, that data will be transferred to the person’s county of residence once the results are returned — meaning Summit’s numbers will be impacted differently each day by residents being tested outside of the county and vice versa.
So far, there have been 28 hospitalizations since the first case. Hospitalizations represent all individuals who had severe COVID-19-like symptoms, including those whose tests are still pending or have come back negative.
While the county has expanded testing capabilities, officials still believe the number of positive results is well below the real spread of the illness in the community. On Friday, officials launched the Summit County Symptom Tracker to help officials better understand the possible scope of the virus in the county.