GA Coronavirus Numbers Keep Shrinking While Middle America's Rise
ATLANTA, GA — Georgia, one of the early hotspots for spread of the coronavirus, continued to show shrinking numbers in Monday’s report from the state health department.
Only 806 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported, along with only 30 deaths. In addition, only 29 new hospitalizations were reported.
Because of weekend lags in reporting, coronavirus numbers reported on Mondays are generally lower and don’t necessarily reflect overall trends. Still, this Monday’s report continues a downward trend seen over the last few weekends.
At the same time, much of the nation’s midsection is just now seeing a surge. According to The New York Times, Utah, for example, reported 1,387 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19, a single-day record. Also, Wisconsin, Indiana, Montana and Wyoming have added more cases in the last week than they had in any other week since the pandemic began.
With early hotspots cooling and less populous areas heating up, the net effect has been a slow rise in the total number of new cases across the nation, according to the Times.
“I’m actually disturbed and concerned about the fact that our baseline of infections is still stuck at around 40,000 per day,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Monday on CNN. “That’s no place to be when you’re trying to get your arms around an epidemic.”
GEORGIA CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS FOR OCT. 5, 2020
The Georgia Department of Public Health in Atlanta reported a total of 323,714 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Monday, Oct. 5. According to the health department’s website, that includes only 806 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.
Georgia also reported 7,192 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 28 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 28,987 hospitalizations — 29 more than the day before — and 5,370 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 and other metropolitan areas continue to have the highest number of positives, with Fulton County still in the lead. The three hardest-hit counties all hit milestones Monday, with Fulton and Gwinnett counties surpassing 28,000 positives and Cobb County surpassing 20,000.
Fulton County: 28,198 cases — 102 new
Gwinnett County: 28,129 cases — 55 new
Cobb County: 20,054 cases — 44 new
DeKalb County: 19,166 cases — 38 new
Hall County: 9,639 cases — 21 new
Chatham County: 8,672 — 20 new
Richmond County: 7,292 — 22 new
Clayton County: 7,200 — 72 new
Cherokee County: 6,275 — 36 new
Bibb County: 6,150 — 14 new
Counties in or near metro Atlanta also continue to have the most deaths from COVID-19.
Fulton County: 579 deaths
Cobb County: 431 deaths — 2 new
Gwinnett County: 417 deaths — 3 new
DeKalb County: 372 deaths — 1 new
Dougherty County: 188 deaths
Bibb County: 177 deaths
Muscogee County: 171 deaths
Chatham County: 169 deaths — 1 new
Richmond County: 167 deaths
Clayton County: 162 deaths — 1 new
As of Monday, Georgia has administered more than 3.3 million COVID-19 tests, with about 9 percent of those tests the less reliable ones used to detect antibodies.
For the more reliable test for the virus itself, 10 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 8.5 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 10 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 about 10 percent. 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 35.3 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 1 million people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Monday.
In the United States, more than 7.4 million people have been infected and more than 210,000 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.
RELATED:
Atlanta Falcons Use Drones To Cleanse Stadium Of Coronavirus
Human Antibody Has Potential To Work As Prevention; Therapy Of Coronavirus
This article originally appeared on the Dallas-Hiram Patch
