Coronavirus: GA Within Mask's Breadth Of 5,000 Deaths

ATLANTA, GA — The Georgia Department of Public Health reported a total of 249,630 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Friday. According to the health department’s website, that includes 2,989 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 4,998 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 96 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 23,125 hospitalizations — 245 more than the day before — and 4,218 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: 23,375 cases — 307 new
• Gwinnett County: 22,786 cases — 331 new
• DeKalb County: 15,731 cases — 126 new
• Cobb County: 15,687 cases — 238 new
• Hall County: 6,916 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: 486 deaths — 5 new
• Cobb County: 358 deaths — 4 new
• Gwinnett County: 302 deaths — 7 new
• DeKalb County: 272 deaths — 4 new
• Dougherty County: 173 deaths — 1 new

As of Friday, Georgia has administered nearly 2.4 million COVID-19 tests, with about 11 percent of those tests the less reliable ones used to detect antibodies.

For the more reliable test for the virus itself, 10.7 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 7.3 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, nearly 22.8 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 795,000 people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Friday.

In the United States, more than 5.6 million people have been infected and nearly 175,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Friday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.