UPDATE: As of Saturday, Cobb had 15,861 cases and 368 deaths.
Nine more deaths from COVID-19 were reported in Cobb on Tuesday—three of them in East Cobb—as the overall number of confirmed cases of the virus in the county surpassed the 15,000 mark.
As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, the Georgia Department of Public Health daily update noted that Cobb County had 15,106 cases of COVID-19, the fourth-highest of any county in Georgia.
Cobb’s case count grew by 124, and the county now has reported 349 deaths—some of which date back to July—a figure that’s second to 477 fatalities in Fulton County.
Across Georgia, 2,873 more cases were reported, for 241,677 overall. Georgia also added 69 more deaths for 4,794, with the backlog dating back to July.
Cobb and Douglas Public Health has mapped out some of that data by ZIP Code that we’ve been updating in recent weeks, and you can view the latest details here. In East Cobb, those numbers as of Tuesday total 3,288 cases and 69 deaths:
- 30062: 969 cases, 18 deaths;
- 30067: 920 cases, 10 deaths;
- 30066: 881 cases, 17 deaths;
- 30068: 504 cases, 24 deaths;
- 30075: 64 cases, 0 deaths.
As we noted in a story posted earlier today, more than 40 percent of those deaths have taken place in long-term care homes. The three new deaths reported from East Cobb today include two in ZIP Code 30066 and one in 30068, but none were in those facilities, according to figures posted by the Georgia Department of Community Health.
A key metric that local school officials are looking at in terms of preparing for a return to classroom learning is community spread. Georgia DPH has been adding some ways to look at that data, including cases per 100,000 people over time and during a rolling 14-day window.
Anything above 100 cases per 100,000 people is considered “significant community spread.” According to Tuesday’s data, Cobb has been averaging 342 cases per 100,000 over the last two weeks, while the county’s overall figure has been 1,908 cases per 1000,000.
Significantly higher numbers of cases per 100,000 are being reported in recent weeks in more rural counties in south Georgia, as seen on the state map above (click here for more details).
A more recent Georgia DPH calculation provides seven-day moving average figures according to the “date of onset” of a positive case, as shown in the yellow line in the graph below. That phrase refers to the day a case is confirmed as positive, and not the day it was reported.
Something else being looked at closely is the case positivity rate, which means the percentage of confirmed cases compared to the numbers of people tested. Anything more than 5 percent is considered high.
In Cobb County, that figure had caused some concern when it reached 14 percent last month, and stayed in double figures a few weeks.
But since that 14.2 percent peak on July 23, the county’s test positivity rate has fallen to 5.4 percent, and the seven-day moving day overage of 6 is the lowest since early June.
Related content
- East Cobb long-term care homes holding steady on COVID
- Cobb to review order permitting local mask mandates
- Kemp issues order allowing local mask mandates
- The East Cobb Open for Business Directory
- East Cobb News COVID-19 Resource Page
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