GA Coronavirus: Numbers Stay Lower But Are Starting To Plateau

Jim Massara
·3 min read

ATLANTA, GA — As Georgia’s coronavirus numbers continue to fall but start to plateau again, the nation as a whole reached a grim milestone on the first day of fall: more than 200,000 deaths from COVID-19.

Georgia reported just more than 1,000 newly diagnosed cases of COVID-19 and 73 deaths from it in Tuesday's daily report, continuing trends of the last few weeks.

At the same time, Georgia’s fortune for now coincides with misfortune for the U.S. heartland, as the coronavirus recedes from its initial beachheads and invades rural regions that once considered themselves safe. According to The New York Times, the nation’s caseload is growing again, especially in states like Wisconsin, Montana and North Dakota.

GEORGIA CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS FOR TUESDAY, SEPT. 22

The Georgia Department of Public Health in Atlanta reported a total of 308,221 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 22. According to the health department’s website, that includes 1,017 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 6,677 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 73 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 27,490 hospitalizations — 17 more than the day before — and 5,026 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: 27,122 cases — 42 new

  • Gwinnett County: 26,744 cases — 66 new

  • Cobb County: 19,174 cases — 82 new

  • DeKalb County: 18,192 cases — 82 new

  • Hall County: 8,864 cases — 37 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: 565 deaths — 1 new

  • Cobb County: 421 deaths

  • Gwinnett County: 396 deaths — 5 new

  • DeKalb County: 351 deaths — 2 new

  • Dougherty County: 183 deaths — 1 new

As of Tuesday, 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, 8.2 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 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 31.4 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and nearly 967,000 people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Tuesday.

In the United States, nearly 6.9 million people have been infected and more than 200,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Tuesday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.

This article originally appeared on the Dallas-Hiram Patch