Percentage Of Positive Coronavirus Tests Slowly Increasing In GA

ATLANTA, GA — For the second day in a row, Georgia on Monday added almost 600 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 to its official tally — and the percentage of positives is slowly increasing. The state also topped 2,200 deaths from the coronavirus.

At 3 p.m. Monday, the Georgia Department of Public Health reported 544,371 tests for COVID-19, of which about 19 percent are the less reliable antibody tests. From those tests, Georgia reports 52,497 cases of COVID-19, or about 10 percent positive. A week ago, it was about 9 percent positive.

So far Georgia has recorded 2,208 deaths from the coronavirus, with 8,746 hospitalizations and 1,925 admissions to an intensive-care unit. 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 cases, with Fulton County in first place with 4,887 confirmed positives. Gwinnett is second with 4,598, DeKalb is third with 4,054, Cobb is fourth with 3,298 and Hall is fifth with 2,642. Today's statistics also identify 1,322 cases of COVID-19 as from "unknown" counties, with 2,502 cases counted as "Non-Georgia."

Fulton County reports the most deaths, with 256, followed by Cobb County, with 196. Dougherty County in southwest Georgia, site of the state's earliest hotspot, is third with 149 deaths. Rounding out the top five counties are Gwinnett in fourth with 139 deaths and DeKalb in fifth with 125 deaths.

The number of counties yet to report a death continues to shrink. While all 159 counties in Georgia have by now reported at least one case of COVID-19, about 36 percent of them — all rural — have reported no more than one death. Twenty counties — again, all rural — have reported no deaths at all. Still, that's a smaller percentage and fewer counties than a week ago, when 28 counties reported no deaths.

Some of the state's poorest counties in south Georgia have seen alarming rises in case rates per 100,000 population. Echols County is by far the worst off with 3,678.51 per 100,000. Second and third are Randolph and Terrell counties, with 2,709.51 and 2,562.89 respectively.

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