Memorial Day Gatherings Fueled GA Summer COVID Surge: Report

ATLANTA, GA — Memorial Day celebrations — and the absence of masks and social distancing that came with them — contributed to the recent spike in coronavirus numbers, according to a report released Tuesday.

An expert warns that the same thing may happen after Labor Day if we aren’t more careful, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The report by Amber Schmidtke, a specialist in microbiology and immunology who’s worked with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, showed an increase of more than 600 percent in the rolling average of cases from Memorial Day to July 11.

That’s when the cases peaked over the summer based on when first symptoms were reported, according to Schmidtke’s analysis of data from the Georgia Department of Public Health.

The Atlanta newspaper reported that Georgia tallied increased cases almost every week from mid-May through mid-July.

The surge was initially focused outside metro Atlanta in border counties and communities driven by tourism, according to Schmidtke.

Georgia is doing better now, but the state is still in “a shaky spot,” Schmidtke said.

“We have made some gains, but we are not back to where we were prior to the summer surge, and we are about to head into the influenza season,” Schmidtke said to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Schmidtke, who tracks the pandemic and posts about it to her Facebook page, was commissioned by the Georgia Hospital Association and civic groups to write the report.

Schmidtke advised the obvious to avoid a second surge after Labor Day: Wear face coverings, stay 6 feet apart and limit gatherings to fewer than 10 people.

CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS

The Georgia Department of Public Health reported a total of 272,697 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Tuesday. According to the health department’s website, that includes 2,287 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 5,733 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 105 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 24,847 hospitalizations — 243 more than the day before — and 4,537 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. Fulton County is still in the lead, surpassing 25,000 total cases on Tuesday. Also, third-place Cobb County passed 17,000 cases for the first time.

• Fulton County: 25,063 cases — 172 new
• Gwinnett County: 24,477 cases — 225 new
• Cobb County: 17,097 cases — 131 new
• DeKalb County: 16,650 cases — 95 new
• Hall County: 7,801 cases — 87 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: 525 deaths — 7 new
• Cobb County: 395 deaths — 4 new
• Gwinnett County: 341 deaths — 5 new
• DeKalb County: 304 deaths — 4 new
• Dougherty County: 180 deaths — 1 new

As of Tuesday, Georgia has administered more than 2.6 million COVID-19 tests, with about 11 percent of those tests the less reliable ones used to detect antibodies.

For the more reliable test for the virus itself, 10.5 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 7.7 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 10.2 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. 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 steadfastly refused to mandate using face masks.

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

Globally, more than 25.5 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 852,000 people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Tuesday.

In the United States, more than 6 million people have been infected and more than 184,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Tuesday. 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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