For the third day in a row, newly reported cases of COVID-19 in Cobb County numbered less than 200, as case rates and the county’s rate of community spread of the virus continue to fall.
The Georgia Department of Public Health reported Tuesday that there were 114 new cases in Cobb, according to the “date of report” category, following 142 and 143 on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.
Wednesday’s total was the lowest date of report figure in Cobb since late November. The seven-day moving average of 190 also is the lowest in the county since early December.
The Georgia DPH reports cases and deaths two ways: By the dates cases and deaths are reported to the health agency, and the date of symptoms, or onset, and date of death.
The date of onset/date of death numbers also are going down, but high numbers of deaths in Cobb continue to lag.
There have been 15 deaths in Cobb via date of report since Monday, including 11 on Tuesday. But dates inside a 14-day window are likely to be revised.
On Jan. 26, the last day before current window, nine deaths took place in Cobb, a single-day high. Eight deaths occurred on two other recent days, Dec. 25 and Jan. 16.
Final January date of death figures in Cobb are not in; 137 deaths were reported by date of report statistics, which sometimes include deaths that took place in previous months.
Since the pandemic began last March, 754 people have died of COVID in Cobb County, and there have been 52,798 cases.
You can look through detailed Cobb County COVID data, include cases and deaths by age, race and ZIP codes, by clicking here.
Dr. Janet Memark, director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health, said in an update Tuesday to the Cobb Board of Commissioners that deaths typically lag cases and hospitalizations, which are also starting to go down.
She didn’t give specific numbers, but was also encouraged by a reduction in the level of community spread in Cobb County.
As the winter spike reached its peak, Cobb had a 14-day average of more than 1,000 cases per 100,000 people. “High community spread” is a two-week average of 100 per 100,000, and Cobb has been under that total only briefly, for a few days in the fall, since last summer.
But as of Wednesday, Cobb’s community spread figure is at 415, both the result of the PCR tests and rapid antigen tests.
“We were more than double these rates just a few weeks ago,” Memark said.
But the availability of vaccines for the general public remains limited. Cobb and Douglas Health has not been booking new appointments for the last two weeks, and is using its supplies for those who previously had appointments.
On Monday, Memark said the agency distributed only 668 vaccines at Jim Miller Park. You can hear her full remarks on the video below. She did not indicate whether new vaccine appointments would be opening for next week, saying Cobb and Douglas Public Health may not get a significant increase in supplies until March or April.
Cobb and Douglas Public Health had been releasing appointments each Friday at 5 p.m. You can check that status and get more information about vaccine distribution by clicking here.
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Looking at that graph, it’s hard to understand why Ragsdale CCSD superintendent) thinks that virtual school – even the option – is necessary for the 2021-2022 school year. It’s hard to tell the ‘number of cases’ line for people under 18 from the bottom line of the chart. That is no reason to shut down schools, even partially, and then require a parent to stay home from work, having nothing that the kid couldn’t bring to school on the wall behind them.
My daughter didn’t learn well in a typical school setting, but there was no accommodation for her; we had to drive her over past Dobbins every day so that she could learn digitally. We did that for the last two years of her high school career. That was Ragsdale’s latest justification for virtual learning. What about the kids for whom school is a refuge from abuse in the home or their source of nutrition? With the curve for everyone going down (in part because they’re changing the way they run the tests to the way they should have been running them all along), the curve for kids as flat and low as it’s always been, the number of psychological problems going up more and more the longer this goes on, and the number of jobs affected, I see no reason to continue virtual learning. Get schools back to normal and let kids live their lives the way they are meant to. My niece’s daughter missed out on the last half of her senior year and her son is about to miss out on his entire senior year as well as the last half of his junior year. Those are memories that cannot be made up like snow days.