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Tuscaloosa County is seeing an uptick in positive COVID-19 cases that local officials are attributing to a travel-heavy Labor Day, citing the latest data from the Alabama Department of Public Health.

The county has 5,993 all-time confirmed positive cases since March and 102 residents have died with COVID-19.

605 cases were added to the county's numbers in the last two weeks and around 5,000 people were tested, resulting in a 11.91 percent 14-day positive rate. Tuscaloosa Fire Chief Randy Smith told the Tuscaloosa City Council Tuesday afternoon that this uptick was expected.

"We do believe this is from Labor Day, just like we saw with the Fourth of July we saw an uptick a few weeks later. This is the uptick that we were expecting," Smith said. "The one good thing is, that we believe [what] we'll see with this one is the numbers won't be as high because the mask ordinance we feel like has helped."

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Alabama saw a considerable surge in coronavirus cases during the month of July as over 47,000 cases were reported. At the height of the surge, the state's 7-day average of positive cases eclipsed 1,800 cases. Since then, the numbers for the state have begun to decline and the state now reports around 700 cases for its 7-day average.

"One thing we wanted to point out is that we are seeing kind of a steady decrease,"  Smith said. "We are at kind of a plateau, we're not moving real fast in the state,"

Watch the entire Pre-Council Meeting below and stay tuned to The Tuscaloosa Thread for more updates.

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