In the first five days of December, 303 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Franklin County — around seven times more than the 42 new cases reported in the same time period last year.

In the first five days of December, 303 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Franklin County — around seven times more than the 42 new cases reported in the same time period last year.

On Sunday, the county recorded 29 new cases, bringing the total number of active cases in Franklin County to 300.

There’s been an average of around five times as many active COVID-19 cases this year as there was at this time last year, and in the past week, numbers have increased after a brief dip.

In November, 917 people tested positive for COVID-19 in Franklin County. In the first five days of December, it has reached around one-third of that November total, in one-sixth of the time.

In total, 26 people have died from COVID-19 in Franklin County throughout the pandemic.

On Friday, Adirondack Health reported that four people hospitalized at its Saranac Lake hospital were positive for COVID-19 and two were on ventilators.

A map the Franklin County Health Department created using data from Thursday shows, though most COVID-19 cases were in the north end of the county, there were 34 cases in Tupper Lake and 25 in Harrietstown.

The Franklin County Board of Legislators has declared that the county is once again in a state of emergency because of the coronavirus pandemic. Board Chairman Donald Dabiew said this state of emergency won’t include mandates for businesses or schools. It’s purely intended to flag the county’s need for more COVID-19-related resources at the moment.