Year in Review: Coronavirus in Stephens County

2021 is coming to a close, which means it is once again time to look back at the top stories in Stephens County over the past 12 months.

One topic that has remained in the news throughout the year has been the coronavirus.

In January, COVID vaccines became available and in August, District 2 Public Health announced that 250,000 vaccines had been administered to residents in the District 2 area, which included Stephens County.

Stephens County continued to lose residents to the virus in 2021, since the start of the pandemic there has been a total of 114 residents who have died from COVID-19, of those, 66 were reported in 2021.

As of December 27, there have been a total of 4,686 cases of COVID-19 in Stephens County, since the start of the pandemic, of those cases, 1,046 were diagnosed in 2021.

In 2020, all Toccoa City Commission and Stephens County Board of Commissioner meetings were held by teleconference; however, by June this year, all government meetings had returned to an in-person format.

The Stephens County Board of Commissioners were the first to return to in-person meetings, with its return being held in March.

For the Toccoa City Commission, Vice-Mayor Jeanette Jamieson pushed for the Commission to return to the in-person format in June.

After the COVID vaccine became accessible to anyone 5-years-old or older, it allowed many events that were forced to be canceled in 2020 to return in 2021. Those events included: the April 10^th and November 6^th Amnesty Day events, Main Street Toccoa’s Harvest Festival, the annual Costume Parade, and Christmas Fest, just to name a few.

Stephens County students were also allowed to return to the classroom at the start of the 2021-2022 academic year.

Though the virus continues to spread, Stephens County residents have been able to return to a somewhat normal life.