GA Reports Largest Single-Day Coronavirus Death Toll

GEORGIA — Georgia saw its largest jump of deaths due to coronavirus on Tuesday, when numbers released by the Georgia Department of Public Health at noon showed 329 deaths, an increase of 100 from Monday at noon.

As of noon on Tuesday, there have been 8,818 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Georgia, and 1,774 hospitalized. This is an increase of 442 hospitalizations and 1,504 new cases since Monday at noon.

According to the Georgia Department of Public Health, the percent of people who have the coronavirus that have been hospitalized is 20.12 percent, and deaths make up 3.73 percent of total confirmed cases in the state.

As of Tuesday, Fulton County's 1,124 cases are the most of any Georgia locality. The next highest totals are 939 in Dougherty County, DeKalb with 645 cases, Cobb with 550 cases, Gwinnett with 525 cases, Clayton with 266, Hall with 196, Lee with 195, Henry with 194, Bartow with 187, Carroll with 177, Sumter with 147, Cherokee with 144, Chatham with 117 and Douglas with 111.

Of those counties, Dougherty has the most deaths in the state with 52. Fulton has had 36 deaths, Cobb had 29, Lee had 15, DeKalb and Bartow each had 11, Gwinnett, Clayton and Mitchell each had 10, and Terrell and Clarke each had nine.

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Of Georgia's coronavirus cases, 59 percent are between ages 18 and 59, while those above the age of 60 make up 36 percent. People up to age 17 represent 1 percent of cases, and the remaining percentage of cases have unknown ages.

The oldest people to have died from coronavirus in Georgia was a 100-year-old woman from Greene County. It is unknown if she had underlying medical conditions.

The youngest person to die from the virus was a 29-year-old woman from Peach County. It is unknown if she had underlying medical conditions.

Commercial laboratories have conducted 30,993 tests, and 8,337 came back positive for COVID-19. Among the Georgia Department of Health's 2,720 completed tests, 481 came back positive.

More than 1.3 million COVID-19 cases are confirmed worldwide and more than 76,000 people have died, Johns Hopkins reported Tuesday morning. The U.S. has over 369,000 cases, the most of any country as of Tuesday.

There have been more than 3,400 deaths in New York City as of Tuesday, the most of any location in the United States.

Kemp ordered a statewide shelter-in-place order that went into effect Friday. It's set to run through April 13. This date is in line with the state's public health emergency order. He also ordered Georgia public schools to stay closed for the rest of the 2019-2020 school year, and move to online learning.

Related: What You Can, Can't Do Under Georgia's Stay At Home Order

Students in higher learning face a similar order: The University System of Georgia said March 16 that all 26 of its institutions will move to online instruction for the remainder of the semester, with extremely limited exceptions.

Georgia has received formal approval from the federal government to waive testing and accountability requirements for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year, State School Superintendent Richard Woods said Tuesday. No state testing — including Georgia Milestones End of Grades and End of Courses, Georgia Alternate Assessment 2.0, and Georgia Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills — will be administered in Georgia for the rest of the school year. Additionally, there will not be a 2020 College and Career Ready Performance Index.

See more:

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