Georgia Reports 1,900 New COVID-19 Cases, Sets Single-Day Record
ATLANTA, GA — Georgia set a record Friday for new COVID-19 cases recorded in a 24-hour period: 1,900 cases in a day.
At 2:50 p.m. Friday, the Georgia Department of Public Health reported a cumulative total of 72,995 cases of COVID-19. Just 24 hours earlier, the total was 71,095.
This follows four straight days that Georgia has reported more than 1,000 new cases a day. The state reported more than 1,700 new cases on three of those days.
The previous record for most new cases reported in a day was Saturday, when Georgia reported 1,800 new cases. Before that, the biggest one-day increase had been 1,525 on April 17, as pandemic restrictions were taking effect.
In addition, the health department reported 2,770 deaths in Georgia from COVID-19. That’s 35 more than the previous day and a slight uptick in the average daily number of deaths over the last two weeks, about 23 deaths a day. Georgia also reports 10,605 hospitalizations and 2,244 admissions to intensive-care units.
No information is available from Georgia about how many patients have recovered.
As the number of Georgia cases has continued to rise, the state is increasing testing while simultaneously relaxing restrictions on businesses and gatherings.
Friday’s numbers reported 920,114 tests administered thus far to Georgians, with about 19 percent the less reliable tests for antibodies. Of those tests, about 8.1 percent came back positive. The positive rate had been floating around 8 percent.
On Friday, Gov. Brian Kemp visited a testing site at Lilburn First Baptist Church. Although Kemp wore a mask, he said he wouldn’t make it mandatory for everyone else.
“Mandating that is a bridge too far for me right now,” Kemp said to WSB-TV. “We have to have the public buy-in.”
Counties in or near metro Atlanta continue to have the highest number of cases, with Gwinnett still in the lead.
Gwinnett County: 7,463 confirmed cases
Fulton County: 6,350 confirmed cases
DeKalb County: 5,322 confirmed cases
Cobb County: 4,433 confirmed cases
Hall County: 3,075 confirmed cases
Counties in or near metro Atlanta also continue to have the highest number of deaths, with DeKalb County now edging out Gwinnett for third place. The lone exception is Dougherty County, the site of Georgia's first major outbreak.
Fulton County: 311 deaths
Cobb County: 238 deaths
DeKalb County: 171 deaths
Gwinnett County: 168 deaths
Dougherty County: 154 deaths
All Georgia statistics are available on the state's COVID-19 website.
Globally, more than 9.6 million people have been infected by COVID-19, and more than 491,000 people have died, Johns Hopkins University reported Friday. In the United States, more than 2.4 million people have been infected and nearly 125,000 people have died from COVID-19.
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This article originally appeared on the Loganville-Grayson Patch
