Nearly 4.7k New COVID-19 Cases, GA Sets 1-Day Record

ATLANTA, GA — Georgia reported 4,689 new cases of COVID-19 Saturday, setting a single-day record.

Saturday's new cases are 259 more than the previous record of 4,484, set on July 10.

Georgia’s health department also reported 37 more deaths Saturday, eight more than reported in the previous 24-hour period.

THE NUMBERS

The Georgia Department of Public Health reported a total of 139,872 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 4:23 p.m. Saturday. That's 4,689 more than was reported at the same time Friday.

Georgia also reported 3,168 deaths so far from COVID-19, 37 more that reported Friday. In addition, the state reported 14,961 hospitalizations — 298 more than the day before — and 2,819 admissions to intensive-care units.

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

Counties in or near metro Atlanta continue to have the highest number of positives. Gwinnett County is still in the lead, passing 13,000 cases total for the first time Saturday. Cobb County, in fourth place, also hit a milestone, passing 8,000 cases total on Saturday.

• Gwinnett County: 13,234 cases — 337 new
• Fulton County: 12,872 cases — 288 new
• DeKalb County: 9,597 cases — 289 new
• Cobb County: 8,223 cases — 263 new
• Hall County: 4,358 cases — 116 new

Counties in or near metro Atlanta also continue to have the most deaths from COVID-19. The lone exception is Dougherty County, the site of Georgia's first major outbreak, which since then has largely stabilized.

• Fulton County: 339 deaths
• Cobb County: 263 deaths
• Gwinnett County: 197 deaths
• DeKalb County: 188 deaths
• Dougherty County: 158 deaths

As of Saturday, Georgia has administered more than 1.4 million COVID-19 tests, with about 14 percent of those tests the less reliable ones used to detect antibodies.

For the first time on July 8, Georgia's COVID-19 website reported separately the percentage of positive results for each type of test without reporting a cumulative percentage. For the more reliable test for the virus itself, 10.3 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 5.8 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 9.7 percent.

As more Georgians were tested over the last few weeks, positive percentages for both the virus test and tests overall have inched upward. On July 6, the percentage of tests overall that came back positive was only 8.7 percent.

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

Globally, more than 14.1 million people have been infected by COVID-19, and more than 598,000 people have died, Johns Hopkins University reported Saturday.

In the United States, more than 3.6 million people have been infected and more than 139,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Saturday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.