Coronavirus: Georgia Tops 4,000 New Cases Friday For 7th Day

ATLANTA, GA — For the seventh time since the pandemic began, Georgia reported more than 4,000 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 in a 24-hour period.

Friday’s count of 4,149 new cases comes with 81 new deaths and 386 new hospitalizations.

Also on Friday — as many Georgia school districts prepare for in-person teaching despite the pandemic — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a sobering case study that showed just how effectively kids can spread the coronavirus.

According to the study, campers and staff at a YMCA camp at Lake Burton in north Georgia were responsible for nearly 300 cases of COVID-19 in June. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution referred to it as “one of the largest known superspreading events in the state.”

Among those cases, the median age was 12. Children between 11 and 17 accounted for 44 percent of the cases, and about a fourth of them were asymptomatic.

Those who test positive for COVID-19 don’t necessarily become ill — in some cases, they may not even show symptoms — but they can spread the coronavirus to others who are vulnerable.

CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS

The Georgia Department of Public Health reported a total of 186,352 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Friday. According to the health department’s website, that includes 4,149 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 3,752 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 81 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 18,689 hospitalizations — 386 more than the day before — and 3,752 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 leading. Gwinnett exceeded 17,000 cases, DeKalb exceeded 12,000 cases and Cobb exceeded 11,000 cases, all for the first time on Friday.

• Fulton County: 17,646 cases — 360 new
• Gwinnett County: 17,130 cases — 419 new
• DeKalb County: 12,127 cases — 211 new
• Cobb County: 11,206 cases — 286 new
• Hall County: 5,372 cases — 100 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: 389 deaths
• Cobb County: 297 deaths
• Gwinnett County: 238 deaths
• DeKalb County: 222 deaths
• Dougherty County: 168 deaths

As of Friday, Georgia has administered nearly 1.8 million COVID-19 tests, with about 12 percent of those tests the less reliable ones used to detect antibodies.

For the more reliable test for the virus itself, 10.9 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 6.4 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 10.3 percent.

As more Georgians were tested over the last few weeks, positive percentages for both the virus test and tests overall have inched upward. On July 6, the percentage of tests overall that came back positive was only 8.7 percent.

All Georgia statistics are available on the state's COVID-19 website.

Globally, more than 17.4 million people have been infected by COVID-19, and more than 675,000 people have died, Johns Hopkins University reported Friday.

In the United States, more than 4.5 million people have been infected and nearly 153,000 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.

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