GA Coronavirus Sent More Than 5,000 To ICU: Report

ATLANTA, GA — Georgia hit another coronavirus milestone in Sunday’s daily report, with more than 5,000 patients admitted to intensive-care units since the pandemic began.

Still, the overall rise in numbers continues to slow, even taking into account lags in reporting over weekends: Only 1,145 newly confirmed cases and three deaths were reported.

GEORGIA CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS FOR SUNDAY, SEPT. 20

The Georgia Department of Public Health in Atlanta reported a total of 306,155 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Sunday. According to the health department’s website, that includes 1,145 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 6,602 deaths so far from COVID-19, with three more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 27,377 hospitalizations — 39 more than the day before — and 5,002 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: 26,992 cases — 82 new
• Gwinnett County: 26,618 cases — 68 new
• Cobb County: 19,041 cases — 41 new
• DeKalb County: 18,072 cases — 66 new
• Hall County: 8,785 cases — 28 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: 564 deaths
• Cobb County: 421 deaths
• Gwinnett County: 391 deaths
• DeKalb County: 349 deaths
• Dougherty County: 182 deaths

As of Sunday, Georgia has administered more than 3 million COVID-19 tests, with about 10 percent of those tests the less reliable ones used to detect antibodies.

For the more reliable test for the virus itself, 10.3 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 8.1 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 30.8 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 958,000 people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Sunday.

In the United States, nearly 6.8 million people have been infected and more than 199,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Sunday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.