 Thanks for checking this video out. Your mountaintop news video is coming up in just a minute. Did you know that it's going to be watched thousands of times, shared a bunch of times, likes, comments, you name it, it's going to be there? Why isn't your ad here? Call me. During a Pike County fiscal court meeting Tuesday morning, Pike County health director Tammy Riley revealed that as of August 16th, the county reached the second highest number of COVID-19 cases since January of 2021. Tuesday Riley spoke with mountaintop about this alarming trend. Well, what we found yesterday is that before yesterday, which was August 16th, our highest daily new case count was 92. That occurred on January 7th. Leading up to January, which we were in the midst of our surge of COVID-19 cases, it took months to build from, you know, the teens or the low 20s number of cases per day up to that 92. What we found recently is that just back in July, we were having low, you know, daily weekly case count. So just in a matter of a few weeks, we went from 20 some cases a week to 92 cases in one day. In other words, the case growth trajectory has is just growing exponentially. Out of the 92 cases reported, Riley adds that 26% of those were school-aged adolescents, a rising trend towards children. Lastly, Riley adds how you can take precautions against the Delta variant. The number one thing that you can do is seek vaccination. If you're unvaccinated, the number one thing that you can do to protect yourself, to possibly avoid, you know, severe illness and all likelihood avoid hospitalization and death is to seek a vaccine. In addition to that, you know, if you're vaccinated, I would still encourage you to wear a mask when you're in public and can, you know, congested areas to protect yourself and protect others around you. I have as vaccinated people to remain masked, when in congested indoor areas, simply until the numbers have a chance to go down. For Mountain Top News, I'm Joel Hodgell.