Cases are still rising in Georgia – the little dip on May 3-4 was just a reporting blip as I suggested it might be. Test positivity is continuing to rise well over 5%, but as I mentioned last week, our thresholds for “good” test positivity likely needs to shift. For the first time, positivity is not moving up commensurate with other metrics, as you can see from the graph below. Less asymptomatic testing, and less testing overall, was partly to blame for this increase in positivity, but now testing volumes have leveled off and positivity continues to rise sharply while other metrics are flat or rising much more gradually.
Cases have definitely been rising most in the Metro Atlanta region, but Metro Atlanta also tests a lot more per capita than other regions, which makes it hard to compare with other regions that are testing at much lower rates now. Cases in Metro Atlanta started climbing in mid-March by onset date, so if this wave follows the common 2 month to peak time frame, we may be seeing a peak soon in cases, at least in the Atlanta area.
Hospital metrics in Georgia have risen a little from recent record lows, but current hospitalizations are still about where they were a month ago, as you can see from the graph below. The dashboard for hospital data in Georgia wasn’t updating for much of the past week, but I contacted them and they got it back working, so I will return to updating the hospital data on my site daily.
Deaths are continuing to decline in Georgia, with the 7-day average of reported deaths going below 20 for the first time since early August 2021 (with the exception of a one-day reporting blip in Dec. 2021). And reported deaths are likely still inflated due to reporting lag. As with the past several weeks, the majority of deaths reported this week were from the Omicron peak (Dec. 2021 – Feb. 2022).