64 GA Counties In Red Zone: White House Coronavirus Task Force

GEORGIA — Sixty-four Georgia counties are in the red zone when it comes to the severity of the COVID-19 outbreak, the White House Coronavirus Task Force said in a recent report. Red zones have more than 100 new cases per 100,000 residents and a diagnostic test positivity result of above 10 percent.

The reports, while not made public by the task force, have been obtained by The Center for Public Integrity. The most recent report made available is dated Nov. 29.

Overall, Georgia is classified in the red zone for COVID-19 cases and is showing signs of a continued viral surge, the report said. The red zone for cases indicates 101 or more new cases per 100,000 population, with the 48th highest rate in the country.

Georgia is in the orange zone for test positivity, indicating a rate between 8 percent and 10 percent, with the 37th highest rate in the country.

The rate of new cases and test positivity has stabilized, but is at a high plateau of ongoing community spread, the report said.

Three counties had the highest number of new cases over the last three weeks: Fulton County, Gwinnett County, and DeKalb County. These counties represent 26.2 percent of new cases in Georgia.

These metro localities are in the red zone: Dalton, Augusta-Richmond County, Gainesville

Chattanooga, Rome, Valdosta, Jefferson, Calhoun, Cornelia, Douglas, Tifton, and St. Marys.

The report noted these counties are in the red zone: Whitfield, Cherokee, Hall, Clayton, Henry, Floyd, Paulding, Bartow, Lowndes, Carroll, Murray and Coweta.

Friday's record-setting number of new infections was not an anomaly, Georgia health department spokesperson Nancy Nydam told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "What we are seeing is a surge in COVID-19 cases statewide."

Georgia reported 1,805 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, down from Saturday's numbers of 3,749 newly confirmed cases.

Georgia reported 5,023 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Friday, the biggest single-day total since the pandemic began. The previous high was 4,782, recorded on July 24 during the summer surge.

A total of 8,971 Georgians have died from the disease, an increase of 2 fatalities in the last 24 hours.

Currently there are 2,441 patients hospitalized for treatment of the respiratory disease, up from 2,404 on Saturday, an increase of 37 patients.

Seventy percent of all counties in the state have moderate or high levels of community transmission (yellow, orange, or red zones), with 40 percent having high levels of community transmission (red zone)

The report also notes that during the week of Nov. 16-22, 10 percent of Georgia nursing homes had at least one new resident COVID-19 case, 25 percent had at least one new staff COVID-19 case, and 4 percent had at least one new resident COVID-19 death.

Georgia had 159 new cases per 100,000 population, compared to a national average of 349 per 100,000.

As a result of the accelerating outbreak, the report offers several recommendations to help slow the pandemic's expected post- Thanksgiving surge:

• New hospital admissions in Georgia remain elevated. Conduct aggressive impact testing of adults under 40 to rapidly identify those who became infected over Thanksgiving before they spread the virus to more vulnerable individuals, driving another round of increased hospitalizations and fatalities.
• Ensure all universities returning in the winter move to mandatory weekly testing of all on and off campus students.
• If you are over 65 or have significant health conditions, you should not enter any indoor public spaces where anyone is unmasked due to the immediate risk to your health; you should have groceries and medications delivered. If you are under 40, you need to assume you became infected during the Thanksgiving period if you gathered beyond your immediate household. You must isolate away from anyone at increased risk for severe disease and get tested immediately.
• It is essential to prepare for and limit a post-Thanksgiving resurgence. Improved public observance of social distancing measures is urgently needed to limit overrunning hospital capacity and preventable deaths.
• Limiting travel throughout the next several weeks is an additional key mitigation measure.
• Ensure masks at all times in public; increase physical distancing through significant reduction in capacity in public and private indoor spaces, including restaurants and bars; and ensure every American understands the clear risks of any family or friend interactions outside of their immediate household indoors without masks.
• Proactive weekly testing of teachers, community college students, county workers, staff in
  crowded or congregate settings, all hospital personnel, large private sector employers will help identify the depth and breadth of community infection. These cases should be triangulated with cases among long-term care facility (LTCF) staff to identify geographic areas with high numbers of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases, which should then trigger widespread testing, identification, and isolation of positive cases among community members, stopping ongoing spread. These efforts to identify and reduce asymptomatic transmission should run concurrently with testing of symptomatic persons and contact tracing of cases.
• Expand strategic use of point-of-care antigen tests for everyone who gathers across households. Antigen tests perform well in the highly infectious window and will be effective in identification of the asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infectious cases. Antigen tests do not perform well after 8-10 days post infection.
• New hospital admissions in Georgia remain elevated. Conduct aggressive impact testing of adults under 40 to rapidly identify those who became infected over Thanksgiving before they spread the virus to more vulnerable individuals, driving another round of increased hospitalizations and fatalities.

Read more:

• GA Coronavirus Record High May Be Start Of 'Thanksgiving Surge'

Spikes in new cases and tests come a little more than a week after Thanksgiving. Officials have urged people who traveled or gathered in large groups for the holiday to get tested for the virus.

"If your family traveled, you have to assume that you are exposed and you became infected and you really need to get tested in the next week," Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said on the CBS show "Face the Nation" Sunday.

"You need to avoid anyone in your family with co-morbidities" or those over age 65, Birx said to those who may have been exposed, as older adults and people with underlying medical conditions are at greatest risk of complications from the virus.

The coronavirus primarily spreads from person-to-person contact, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends avoiding getting the virus by putting 6 feet of distance between one another to decrease the likelihood of its transmission as well as frequent hand-washing, staying home when sick and wearing a face covering when around other people.

With reporting by Kara Seymour