CAIRO — Grady County has quadrupled its number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in less than a week, according to Grady County Health Department.

Health Department director Michelle Thornton said Grady County has 12 positively identified cases of COVID-19 as of Wednesday morning.

No patients are known to have died of the virus in Grady County.

The state Department of Public Health showed Grady County with just three confirmed cases of the coronavirus as recently as Saturday.

With confirmed cases of the coronavirus continuing to increase across southwest Georgia, DPH is calling on residents to do their part to prevent further spread of the virus by staying at home, practicing social distancing, washing hands and wearing a facemask when in public.

“We can stop the spread of COVID-19 in Georgia,” Kathleen Toomey, DPH commissioner, said Tuesday, “but every Georgian must take personal responsibility now and follow the prevention guidance to keep this deadly virus from taking any more lives.”

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now recommending that individuals wear facemasks, particularly in areas where social distancing can be difficult to maintain, such as grocery stores. The CDC says masks, which can be as simple as a cloth covering, can prevent people who may have the virus and not know it from spreading it to others.

As use of facemasks and gloves continues to rise among the public, DPH officials are also urging residents to dispose of those items properly.

Masks, gloves, sanitizing wipes and other items used for disinfecting should be safely disposed in trash cans, said Dr. Charles Ruis, district health director with the Southwest Public Health District. Sanitation materials left in shopping carts or on the ground in parking lots, sidewalks or neighborhood streets risk exposure of the coronavirus to others when they are collected.

In addition, disposable masks, gloves and wipes should never be flushed, Dr. Ruis said.

For more information about COVID-19, Dr. Ruis said to visit www.dph.georgia.gov/novelcoronavirus or www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html.

More than 1,600 cases of the virus have been identified in the 14-county Southwest Public Health District as of Tuesday afternoon, according to DPH. A total of 104 deaths have been attributed to the virus in the region.