GA COVID-19: Almost 3K New Cases, Death Rate Expected To Rise

ATLANTA, GA — Georgia tallied 2,837 more cases of COVID-19 and eight more deaths in Thursday’s health-department report.

The relatively small number of deaths may sound encouraging, but an infectious-disease expert with Emory Clinic warns that the other shoe will drop in the next month or so.

“Given the massive influx of new cases, it is only rational to expect that we will see a rise in deaths," Dr. Jay Varkey said to WXIA-TV in Atlanta.

Symptoms bad enough to hospitalize a patient may not appear until up to two weeks after infection, according to Varkey. About 20 percent of those infected will require hospitalization, with up to 5 percent of that group requiring intensive care.

For those who die from COVID-19, it takes four to six weeks after infection, Varkey said.

"We cannot take solace in the fact that the death rate has been low," Varkey said to WXIA-TV. We need to be prepared for that number to go up."

And those numbers have continued to rise: Georgia’s Thursday total for confirmed cases of COVID-19 is 106,727, with 2,930 total deaths, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health. In addition, the state reported 12,606 hospitalizations and 2,519 admissions to intensive-care units.

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

As of Thursday, nearly 1.2 million Georgians have been tested for COVID-19, with about 17 percent the less reliable tests for antibodies. About 9 percent of all tests came back positive.

Counties in or near metro Atlanta continue to have the highest number of cases, with Gwinnett still in the lead.

• Gwinnett County: 10,415 confirmed cases
• Fulton County: 9,586 confirmed cases
• DeKalb County: 7,472 confirmed cases
• Cobb County: 6,369 confirmed cases
• Hall County: 3,620 confirmed cases

Counties in or near metro Atlanta also continue to have the highest number of deaths. The lone exception is Dougherty County, site of Georgia's first major outbreak.

• Fulton County: 319 deaths
• Cobb County: 248 deaths
• DeKalb County: 175 deaths
• Gwinnett County: 175 deaths
• Dougherty County: 155 deaths

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

Globally, more than 12.1 million people have been infected by COVID-19, and more than 551,000 people have died, Johns Hopkins University reported Thursday. In the United States, more than 3 million people have been infected and nearly 133,000 people have died from COVID-19.

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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