GA Health Experts Sidelined Analyzing Coronavirus Stats: Report

ATLANTA, GA — An investigative report published over the weekend cast doubt on the accuracy of coronavirus statistics posted on Georgia’s dashboard and how much control the health department has in analyzing them.

The state’s health department website — which Patch uses to update Georgia’s daily tally of COVID-19 cases and deaths — is largely outsourced, according to an article published Saturday by Atlanta Magazine. While that’s not unusual, according to experts, outsourcing the analysis of data while sidelining the health department is.

“That is the job of an epidemiologist, to not just produce a report — a biostatistician can do that — but [to carry out] the ‘ground truthing’ of it,” Janet Hamilton of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists said to Atlanta Magazine. “It’s just so critical that you do have the right epidemiologists that are leading the efforts and able to see inside the work.”

The upshoot is that the Georgia Department of Public Health has been blamed for dashboard issues it couldn’t control. The revised website was launched soon after Gov. Brian Kemp reopened much of the state for business.

“From the sounds of it, the epidemiologists and professionals working at DPH had little to no control over what goes on the Daily Status Report and that is consistent with my experience working on the state’s COVID-19 Data Task Force,”epidemiologist Amber Schmidtke wrote in a Sunday blog post. “Any changes needed for the site all had to go through the Governor’s office and most suggestions I was aware of were shot down.”

Schmidtke praised the work of Georgia’s health-department professionals and urged the public to support them.

“I encourage you to read the report and then offer your solidarity and support for public health in any way that you can,” Schmidtke wrote Sunday. “Because they are the people who are going to get us through the pandemic. Without their data, investigations and interventions, we are lost.”

Atlanta Magazine’s investigative report can be found here.

GEORGIA CORONAVIRUS STATISTICS FOR OCT. 26, 2020

The Georgia Department of Public Health in Atlanta reported a total of 351,881 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Monday, Oct. 26. According to the health department’s website, that includes 975 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 7,827 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 18 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 31,087 hospitalizations — 19 more than the day before — and 5,829 admissions so far to intensive-care units.

Statistics following a weekend tend to be smaller because of lags in reporting and don’t necessarily reflect larger trends. They usually catch up by Tuesday or Wednesday.

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: 30,926 cases
2. Gwinnett County: 30,383 cases
3. Cobb County: 21,814 cases
4. DeKalb County: 21,049 cases
5. Hall County: 10,605 cases
6. Chatham County: 9,342
7. Clayton County: 8,168
8. Richmond County: 7,926
9. Cherokee County: 7,057
10. Bibb County: 6,594

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

1. Fulton County: 619 deaths — 1 new
2. Cobb County: 454 deaths
3. Gwinnett County: 442 deaths — 2 new
4. DeKalb County: 397 deaths — 2 new
5. Dougherty County: 191 deaths
6. Bibb County: 194 deaths
7. Chatham County: 186 deaths
8. Richmond County: 182 deaths
9. Clayton County: 175 deaths
10. Muscogee County: 174 deaths

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

Globally, more than 43.3 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 1.1 million people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Monday.

In the United States, nearly 8.7 million people have been infected and more than 225,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Monday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.