GA Schools Outpaced Nursing Homes For New Coronavirus Outbreaks

ATLANTA, GA — While coronavirus numbers overall are still dropping, Georgia schools are now flaring up as the latest hotspots for COVID-19.

According to statistics released Tuesday by the Georgia Department of Public Health, 42 percent of the state’s outbreaks from Sept. 6-12 occurred at schools, while only 16 percent occurred at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

Overall, schools are second behind nursing homes for cumulative clusters of COVID-19 outbreaks.

The report does not distinguish between kindergarten-through-12th grade schools and colleges or universities. Also, the report offers no information about whether the schools had a mask policy.

“Considering that schools only recently went back to face-to-face instruction, that they have already reached the number-two position for contributing to outbreaks means that there have been multiple weeks where schools have had outbreaks,” Georgia immunologist Amber Schmidtke wrote on her blog Wednesday. Schmidtke is a veteran of the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention who posts regularly to her own website and to Facebook.

GEORGIA CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS

The Georgia Department of Public Health in Atlanta reported a total of 302,737 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Friday. According to the health department’s website, that includes 1,870 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 6,537 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 64 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 27,203 hospitalizations — 149 more than the day before — and 4,966 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: 26,778 cases — 158 new
• Gwinnett County: 26,403 cases — 123 new
• Cobb County: 18,941 cases — 102 new
• DeKalb County: 17,907 cases — 58 new
• Hall County: 8,634 cases — 47 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: 563 deaths — 3 new
• Cobb County: 419 deaths — 3 new
• Gwinnett County: 388 deaths — 2 new
• DeKalb County: 346 deaths — 1 new
• Dougherty County: 182 deaths

As of Friday, Georgia has administered more than 2.9 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, 10.2 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 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 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 948,000 people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Friday.

In the United States, nearly 6.7 million people have been infected and more than 198,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Friday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.