Coronavirus: GA Numbers Dip Slightly Sunday; 13 Deaths Reported

ATLANTA, GA — Georgia’s daily coronavirus statistics have followed a pattern over the last few weeks: Numbers dip slightly over the weekend, then pick back up on Tuesday as reports from the previous few days are tabulated.

This Sunday held true to form, with 3,172 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported by Georgia’s health department, along with only 15 deaths. While the number of new cases is still high, both numbers are significantly lower than on Friday, when more than 4,000 new cases and 81 new deaths were reported.

If Sunday’s numbers represent a downward trend, we’ll probably know by Tuesday.

CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS

The Georgia Department of Public Health reported a total of 193,177 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Sunday. According to the health department’s website, that includes 3,172 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 3,840 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 15 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 19,064 hospitalizations — 69 more than the day before — and 3,475 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, exceeding 18,000 cases for the first time Sunday.

• Fulton County: 18,079 cases — 221 new
• Gwinnett County: 17,781 cases — 270 new
• DeKalb County: 12,476 cases — 128 new
• Cobb County: 11,690 cases — 254 new
• Hall County: 5,523 cases — 41 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. None of Georgia’s top five counties added any deaths on Sunday.

• Fulton County: 398 deaths
• Cobb County: 298 deaths
• Gwinnett County: 240 deaths
• DeKalb County: 225 deaths
• Dougherty County: 168 deaths

As of Sunday, Georgia has administered more than 1.85 million COVID-19 tests, with about 12 percent of those tests the less reliable ones used to detect antibodies.

For the more reliable test for the virus itself, 10.9 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 6.5 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 10.4 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 17.8 million people have been infected by COVID-19, and nearly 680,000 people have died, Johns Hopkins University reported Sunday.

In the United States, more than 4.6 million people have been infected and more than 154,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Sunday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.