UGA Sees Coronavirus Positives Quadruple For First Week Of Class

ATLANTA, GA — The coronavirus numbers are going down — depending on where you live.

Georgia’s Wednesday report of the latest coronavirus numbers continue to show a generally downward trend, with only about 2,000 newly confirmed cases and 68 deaths from COVID-19.

If you’re a student in Athens, though, the numbers don’t look quite so rosy.

On Wednesday, the University of Georgia reported 821 new positive cases for the week of Aug. 24-28, almost four times as many as in the week before.

Georgia’s fall semester started Aug. 20, so these numbers represent the first full week of classes.

About half of the COVID-19 virus cases were self-reported by students and employees as required by the university, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. University health officials diagnosed about a third of them.

University of Georgia President Jere Morehead issued a statement Wednesday via Twitter warning students to avoid “social venues where social distancing is impossible to maintain” and not attend “large social gatherings.” He also cautioned students to consider other people’s health as they leave campus over the Labor Day weekend.

CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS

The Georgia Department of Public Health reported a total of 274,613 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus at 2:50 p.m. Wednesday. According to the health department’s website, that includes 2,021 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 5,795 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 68 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 25,025 hospitalizations — 178 more than the day before — and 4,588 admissions so far 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, with Fulton County still in the lead.

• Fulton County: 25,150 cases — 87 new
• Gwinnett County: 24,608 cases — 131 new
• Cobb County: 17,210 cases — 113 new
• DeKalb County: 16,716 cases — 66 new
• Hall County: 7,869 cases — 68 new

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

• Fulton County: 527 deaths — 2 new
• Cobb County: 395 deaths
• Gwinnett County: 343 deaths — 2 new
• DeKalb County: 309 deaths — 5 new
• Dougherty County: 179 deaths — 1 removed

As of Wednesday, Georgia has administered more than 2.6 million COVID-19 tests, with about 10.5 percent of those tests the less reliable ones used to detect antibodies.

For the more reliable test for the virus itself, 10.5 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 7.7 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 10.2 percent.

As more Georgians were tested over the last month, the percentage of positive tests inched upward from about 8 percent to more than 10 percent. However, over the last few weeks, the percentage of positives has stabilized at just more than 10 percent. According to the World Health Organization, positive test results should no more than 5 percent for two weeks before reopening for business as usual. Georgia largely reopened for business in April and May, and since then Gov. Brian Kemp has steadfastly refused to mandate using face masks.

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

Globally, more than 25.8 million people have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, and more than 858,000 people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Wednesday.

In the United States, more than 6 million people have been infected and nearly 185,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Wednesday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.