GA Coronavirus Cases Continue Rising, But No Spike Yet

ATLANTA, GA — Georgia’s coronavirus numbers continued to rise Saturday — not as quickly as numbers in America’s heartland, but rising nonetheless.

Statistics released Saturday afternoon by Georgia’s health department showed 1,778 newly confirmed cases in the last 24 hours. The state’s seven-day moving average was reported as 1,636.4. Both numbers are down somewhat from Friday but continue to represent a general upward trend over the last few weeks.

Noting that the state’s current numbers are 28 percent lower than the summer peak, one expert urged Georgians to “buckle down” on safety precautions to prevent the increase from becoming a surge.

“I think we will remember how intense the summer surge felt at the time,” said Amber Schmidtke, a Mercer University microbiologist who blogs on the pandemic, in a Friday post to her website. “If and when this latest increase becomes a surge, we might be in for a much higher peak than last time.”

GEORGIA CORONAVIRUS STATISTICS FOR NOV. 7, 2020

The Georgia Department of Public Health in Atlanta reported a total of 371,825 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7. According to the health department’s website, that includes 1,778 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 8,193 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 38 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 32,435 hospitalizations — 118 more than the day before — and 6,091 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 and other metropolitan areas continue to have the highest number of positives, with Fulton County still in the lead.

1. Fulton County: 32,552 cases — 119 new
2. Gwinnett County: 32,045 cases — 112 new
3. Cobb County: 23,026 cases — 113 new
4. DeKalb County: 22,445 cases — 66 new
5. Hall County: 11,150 cases — 48 new
6. Chatham County: 9,728 — 29 new
7. Clayton County: 8,715 — 54 new
8. Richmond County: 8,372 — 21 new
9. Cherokee County: 7,656 — 69 new
10. Bibb County: 6,815 — 15 new

Counties in or near metro Atlanta also continue to have the most deaths from COVID-19.

1. Fulton County: 636 deaths — 1 new
2. Cobb County: 468 deaths — 3 new
3. Gwinnett County: 459 deaths — 1 new
4. DeKalb County: 408 deaths — 1 new
5. Bibb County: 204 deaths — 1 new
6. Chatham County: 194 deaths
7. Dougherty County: 193 deaths
8. Richmond County: 189 deaths — 1 new
9. Hall County: 184
10. Clayton County: 183 deaths

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

Globally, more than 49.6 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 1.2 million people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Saturday.

In the United States, nearly 9.8 million people have been infected and more than 236,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Saturday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.