Coronavirus Order Offers Guides For Visiting Nursing Homes Again

ATLANTA, GA — You may be able to visit grandma at the nursing home soon — if her nursing home can show Georgia officials it’s safe to do so.

That’s the gist of a major change in Gov. Brian Kemp’s latest coronavirus executive order, issued late Tuesday: The 51-page document outlines guidance for allowing visitors into long-term care facilities.

Shelter-in-place remains for residents, but visitors may be allowed in depending on a facility’s rate of coronavirus testing, how long it’s been since the last infection and other factors.

Overall, Georgia continues to show progress in slowing down the spread of the coronavirus. In a report released Wednesday by the Georgia Department of Public Health, the seven-day average ending Monday of new cases reported dropped 11.3 percent. It’s down 54 percent from Georgia’s peak on July 24.

Still, nursing homes and group facilities remain a hot spot. As of Tuesday, Georgia reported 2,415 deaths at the state’s assisted-living facilities — about 38 percent of the total 6,419 deaths from COVID-19 reported on that day.

Also, while they are slowing down, the absolute numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 continue to rise.

On Thursday, Georgia passed two milestones, with more than 300,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 27,000 hospitalizations from it since the pandemic began. Georgia is also approaching 5,000 total admissions to intensive-care units, a number it will likely pass before the month ends.

GEORGIA CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS

The Georgia Department of Public Health in Atlanta reported a total of 300,903 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Thursday. According to the health department’s website, that includes 1,901 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 6,474 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 56 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 27,054 hospitalizations — 170 more than the day before — and 4,945 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.

• Fulton County: 26,620 cases — 103 new
• Gwinnett County: 26,280 cases — 147 new
• Cobb County: 18,839 cases — 120 new
• DeKalb County: 17,849 cases — 72 new
• Hall County: 8,587 cases — 54 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: 560 deaths — 3 new
• Cobb County: 416 deaths — 1 new
• Gwinnett County: 386 deaths — 5 new
• DeKalb County: 345 deaths — 5 new
• Dougherty County: 182 deaths

As of Thursday, Georgia has administered more than 2.9 million COVID-19 tests, with about 10 percent of those tests the less reliable ones used to detect antibodies.

For the more reliable test for the virus itself, 10.3 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 8.1 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 10.1 percent.

As more Georgians were tested over the last month, the percentage of positive tests inched upward from about 8 percent to more than 10 percent. However, over the last few weeks, the percentage of positives has stabilized at just more than 10 percent and is now starting to slowly drop. According to the World Health Organization, positive test results should no more than 5 percent for two weeks before reopening for business as usual. Georgia largely reopened for business in April and May, and since then Gov. Brian Kemp has promoted the use of face masks but has steadfastly refused to mandate them.

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

Globally, nearly 30 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 942,000 people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Thursday.

In the United States, more than 6.6 million people have been infected and more than 197,000 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.