GA Coronavirus: About 2K New Cases, 60 Deaths Reported Wednesday

ATLANTA, GA — The Georgia Department of Public Health reported a total of 287,287 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Wednesday. According to the health department’s website, that includes 2,081 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 6,128 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 60 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 25,845 hospitalizations — 256 more than the day before — and 4,736 admissions so far to intensive-care units.

Because of lags in reporting, coronavirus numbers reported just after weekends are generally lower and don’t necessarily reflect overall trends. They usually bounce back up a day or so later and are even a bit higher as reporting catches up with the backlog.

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. Also, Cobb County surpassed 18,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 for the first time Wednesday.

• Fulton County: 25,861 cases — 105 new
• Gwinnett County: 25,376 cases — 161 new
• Cobb County: 18,005 cases — 155 new
• DeKalb County: 17,237 cases — 68 new
• Hall County: 8,189 cases — 12 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: 551 deaths — 3 new
• Cobb County: 406 deaths — 1 new
• Gwinnett County: 361 deaths — 2 new
• DeKalb County: 324 deaths — 6 new
• Dougherty County: 180 deaths

As of Wednesday, Georgia has administered more than 2.8 million COVID-19 tests, with about 10.2 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, 7.9 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 10.1 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 and is now starting to slowly drop. 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 promoted the use of face masks but has steadfastly refused to mandate them.

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

Globally, more than 27.6 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 898,000 people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Wednesday.

In the United States, more than 6.3 million people have been infected and nearly 190,000 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.