GA Reports Reports 420 More COVID-19 Hospitalizations Wednesday

ATLANTA, GA — As intensive-care units in some part of Georgia fill to capacity and facilities like Grady Memorial in Atlanta reaching their limits, the state again reported more than 400 new hospitalizations Wednesday afternoon.

The one-day total — 420 — follows 406 new hospitalizations on Tuesday. Nearly 400 new hospitalizations were reported on Friday, and 431 were reported on Thursday.

Georgia also reported on Wednesday 3,373 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 79 deaths.

Those who test positive for COVID-19 don’t necessarily become ill — in some cases, they may not even show symptoms — but they can spread the coronavirus to others who are vulnerable.

CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS

The Georgia Department of Public Health reported a total of 178,323 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Wednesday. According to the health department’s website, that's 3,373 more than was reported at the same time Tuesday.

Georgia also reported 3,642 deaths so far from COVID-19, 79 more that reported Tuesday. In addition, the state reported 17,964 hospitalizations — 420 more than the day before — and 3,301 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 still leading and Gwinnett County exceeding 16,000 cases total for the first time Wednesday.

• Fulton County: 16,867 cases — 385 new
• Gwinnett County: 16,255 cases — 340 new
• DeKalb County: 11,679 cases — 185 new
• Cobb County: 10,653 cases — 200 new
• Hall County: 5,165 cases — 148 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: 381 deaths
• Cobb County: 297 deaths
• Gwinnett County: 223 deaths
• DeKalb County: 213 deaths
• Dougherty County: 167 deaths

As of Wednesday, Georgia has administered more than 1.7 million COVID-19 tests, with about 13 percent of those tests the less reliable ones used to detect antibodies.

For the more reliable test for the virus itself, 10.8 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 6.3 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 10.3 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 16.8 million people have been infected by COVID-19, and more than 662,000 people have died, Johns Hopkins University reported Wednesday.

In the United States, nearly 4.4 million people have been infected and more than 150,000 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.

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