7-Year-Old Boy Among 4,000 Georgians Killed By Coronavirus

ATLANTA, GA — As the coronavirus pandemic continues, Georgia keeps passing milestones: Georgia exceeded more than 4,000 deaths and 20,000 hospitalizations Thursday in the state health department’s daily report.

Just yesterday, Georgia had exceeded 200,000 total confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Georgia also posted one other milestone, albeit buried in the list of deaths: the youngest Georgian to die so far from COVID-19, a 7-year-old Black male in Chatham County with no other medical conditions.

"Unfortunately it is true," Georgia Department of Public Health spokesperson Nancy Nydam said to WXIA-TV in Atlanta. No other details about the death were available because of medical-confidentiality laws.

Young people are able to carry and spread the coronavirus but generally don't get sick from it. Until today, the youngest fatality from COVID-19 in Georgia had been a 17-year-old boy with a pre-existing condition.

The state’s health department also posted 3,250 newly confirmed cases and 42 more deaths over the last 24 hours. That might be good news; both numbers are lower than the previous day’s tally.

Georgia added 214 more hospitalizations, with a total of 3,647 intensive-care admissions so far due to the coronavirus.

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 204,895 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Thursday. According to the health department’s website, that includes 3,250 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 4,026 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 42 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 20,002 hospitalizations — 214 more than the day before — and 3,647 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 in the lead and exceeding 19,000 cases for the first time Thursday. Also, DeKalb exceeded 13,000 on Thursday.

• Fulton County: 19,230 cases — 234 new
• Gwinnett County: 18,550 cases — 304 new
• DeKalb County: 13,237 cases — 239 new
• Cobb County: 12,718 cases — 229 new
• Hall County: 5,847 cases — 88 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: 410 deaths — 3 new
• Cobb County: 313 deaths — 3 new
• Gwinnett County: 244 deaths — 3 new
• DeKalb County: 234 deaths — 3 new
• Dougherty County: 170 deaths — 1 new

As of Thursday, Georgia has administered more than 1.9 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, 11 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 6.7 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 10.4 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, nearly 18.9 million people have been tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 710,000 people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Thursday.

In the United States, more than 4.8 million people have been infected and more than 159,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Thursday. 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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