GA Coronavirus: 7-Day Average Of Cases Up 600+ In Just A Week

ATLANTA, GA — After almost two months of relative peace in Georgia, the roller coaster ride of coronavirus statistics is headed back up.

In numbers released Thursday by the state health department, Georgia reported 2,735 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 over the previous 24 hours. This marks the fifth time since Oct. 31 that the daily number of new cases exceeded 2,000. The last time the daily total passed 2,000 before that was almost two months before, on Sept. 3.

The rise in Georgia’s seven-day moving average of new COVID-19 cases is correspondingly steep: On Thursday it hit 2,395.3, up more than 600 in just one week.

And the situation is probably worse than it appears on Georgia’s website, according to one expert.

“The data visualizations on the DPH report are becoming less and less valuable and meaningful over time because they don’t accurately depict the disease intensity that Georgia is experiencing,” wrote Amber Schmidtke, a Mercer University professor and immunology expert who posts regularly on the pandemic.

Schmidtke pointed out Wednesday that Georgia’s antigen-positive quick tests, broken out as a separate statistic on Georgia’s COVID-19 website, aren’t part of the total numbers used to create graphs. The antigen-positive tests constitute more than 25 percent of the total positive tests administered in Georgia.

However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does include antigen tests.

“if the antigen test is good enough for CDC to count those cases and the (White House Coronavirus Task Force) also wants them counted as cases, then I’m not sure why Georgia isn’t doing so,” Schmidtke wrote.

Antigen quick tests, which show indirect evidence of the coronavirus, are slightly less sensitive than the test for the coronavirus itself and more likely to produce false negatives. Still, they’re considered useful by most medical experts.

GEORGIA CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS FOR NOV. 19, 2020

The Georgia Department of Public Health in Atlanta reported a total of 396,641 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19. According to the health department’s website, that includes 2,735 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 over the last 24 hours. In addition, Georgia reported 835 new antigen-positive cases over the last 24 hours, which are considered to be probable cases of COVID-19.

Georgia has reported 8,569 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 40 more confirmed deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. Georgia also reported 533 probable deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic. These probable deaths include fatalities with indirect evidence of COVID-19.

Georgia reported 33,778 hospitalizations — 111 more than the day before — and 6,327 admissions so far to intensive-care units. The percentage of ICU beds in use statewide rose about 1 percent to 82 percent of capacity, but not all of these beds are being used by COVID-19 patients. About 28 percent of total ventilators available in Georgia are currently in use.

No information is available from Georgia about how many patients have recovered.

Counties in or near metro Atlanta and other metropolitan areas continue to have the highest number of positives, with Fulton County still in the lead.

1. Fulton County: 35,089 cases — 250 new
2. Gwinnett County: 34,400 cases — 253 new
3. Cobb County: 24,751 cases — 193 new
4. DeKalb County: 24,361 cases — 199 new
5. Hall County: 11,733 cases — 56 new
6. Chatham County: 10,187 — 80 new
7. Clayton County: 9,311— 71 new
8. Richmond County: 8,975 — 80 new
9. Cherokee County: 8,468 — 97 new
10. Bibb County: 7,098 — 17 new

Counties in or near metro Atlanta also continue to have the most deaths from COVID-19. Also, Clayton County, on Atlanta’s south side, moved to ninth place ahead of Hall County, on Atlanta’s north side.

1. Fulton County: 653 deaths
2. Cobb County: 486 deaths — 1 removed
3. Gwinnett County: 478 deaths — 2 new
4. DeKalb County: 428 deaths
5. Bibb County: 215 deaths
6. Chatham County: 200 deaths — 1 new
7. Dougherty County: 198 deaths — 1 new
8. Richmond County: 191 deaths — 1 removed
9. Clayton County: 189 deaths — 1 removed
10. Hall County: 189 deaths — 1 new

All Georgia statistics are available on the state's COVID-19 website.

Globally, nearly 56.7 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 1.35 million people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Thursday.

In the United States, more than 11.6 million people have been infected and nearly 252,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Thursday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.

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