Georgia Catches A Break, Reports Fewer COVID-19 Cases On Monday

ATLANTA, GA — Georgia tallied its lowest count of COVID-19 cases in nearly two weeks, according to the health department’s daily report Monday.

The Georgia Department of Public Health reported a total of 145,575 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Monday. That's 2,452 more than was reported at the same time Sunday.

The last time Georgia reported fewer than 3,000 cases was on July 9, when the health department tallied only 2,837 new cases. Georgia set a one-day record for new cases on Saturday, reporting 4,689 cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Georgia also reported 3,176 deaths so far from COVID-19, only three more that reported Sunday. In addition, the state reported 15,047 hospitalizations — 37 more than the day before — and 2,829 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, and Fulton County joined it Sunday in reporting more than 13,000 cases.

• Gwinnett County: 13,614 cases — 170 new
• Fulton County: 13,379 cases — 262 new
• DeKalb County: 9,800 cases — 68 new
• Cobb County: 8,510 cases — 140 new
• Hall County: 4,420 cases — 26 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: 340 deaths
• Cobb County: 264 deaths
• Gwinnett County: 199 deaths
• DeKalb County: 188 deaths
• Dougherty County: 158 deaths

As of Monday, 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 more reliable test for the virus itself, 10.4 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 5.9 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 9.8 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, nearly 14.6 million people have been infected by COVID-19, and more than 608,000 people have died, Johns Hopkins University reported Monday.

In the United States, more than 3.8 million people have been infected and nearly 141,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Monday. 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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