Ready Or Not, Here We Come: GA Reopens Bars, COVID Keeps Killing

ATLANTA, GA — Ready or not, here we come.

As bars and clubs go back into business today — one of the last phases in Georgia’s grand reopening — the state health department reports more than 47,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 2,000 deaths from it as of midday Monday.

There’s no turning back, either. In Columbus last week, Gov. Brian Kemp said Georgia simply couldn’t afford to close back down.

“We have to get people back to work,” Kemp said, as reported by WTVM-TV. “We cannot continue to survive as a country and a state sheltering in place.”

At 1 p.m. Monday, the Georgia Department of Public Health reported 562,815 tests for COVID-19, of which 91,184 are the less reliable antibody tests. From those tests, Georgia reports 47,618 cases of COVID-19, an increase of 632 cases from the same time Sunday.

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Georgia passed 2,000 deaths on Saturday. By Monday at 1 p.m., the state had recorded 2,042 deaths the coronavirus, with 8,127 hospitalizations. State figures show 32 coronavirus deaths occurred in the past 24 hours, and hospitalizations increased by 181 patients.

Counties in or near metro Atlanta continue to have the highest number of cases, with Fulton County in first place with 4,547 confirmed positives. Gwinnett is now second with 3,812 cases, while DeKalb is third with 3,755, Cobb is fourth with 3,035 and Hall is fifth with 2,485. Today's statistics also identify 1,690 cases of COVID-19 as from "unknown" counties, with 2,149 cases counted as "Non-Georgia."

Fulton County reports the most deaths, with 235, followed by Cobb County, with 179. Dougherty County in southwest Georgia, site of the state's earliest hotspot, is third with 149 deaths. Rounding out the top five counties are Gwinnett in fourth with 130 deaths and DeKalb in fifth with 120 deaths.

Monday is Georgia’s last day to report coronavirus numbers three times a day. Starting Tuesday, the state’s health department will report numbers only once daily, at 3 p.m. According to Georgia’s COVID-19 website, fewer reports “will allow time to process and validate laboratory and case reports to improve data quality and accuracy.”

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