GA Coronavirus: Hospitalizations Exceed 28,000 Total Friday

ATLANTA, GA — Georgia Department of Public Health in Atlanta reported a total of 312,514 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25. According to the health department’s website, that includes 1,547 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 6,874 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 53 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 28,035 hospitalizations — 132 more than the day before — and 5,156 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 and Gwinnett County joining it with more than 27,000 cases. Also, Hall County surpassed 9,000 cases of COVID-19 for the first time Friday.

• Fulton County: 27,389 cases — 84 new
• Gwinnett County: 27,187 cases — 136 new
• Cobb County: 19,430 cases — 76 new
• DeKalb County: 18,521 cases — 103 new
• Hall County: 9,147 cases — 112 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. Gwinnett County, in third place, surpassed 400 deaths on Friday.

• Fulton County: 571 deaths — 2 new
• Cobb County: 425 deaths — 2 new
• Gwinnett County: 401 deaths — 3 new
• DeKalb County: 358 deaths — 1 new
• Dougherty County: 187 deaths — 1 new

As of Friday, Georgia has administered more than 3.1 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, 10.2 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 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 32.3 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 985,000 people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Friday.

In the United States, more than 7 million people have been infected and more than 203,000 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.