The director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health said Tuesday that the spread of COVID-19 in Cobb County has rapidly increased over the last week.
In an e-mail message, Dr. Janet Memark said the current transmission rate of COVID-19 is 348 per 100,000 people, well beyond the “high” threshold of 100/100K.
That number—which includes both PCR and Antigen tests—was in the low 200s at the end of last week, and Cobb briefly dipped to the high 80s a week ago.
Memark said in an interview recorded Tuesday by Cobb County government (see video at bottom) that the percentage of sequenced Omicron cases in the Southeast have shot up from three percent a week ago to 95 percent now.
“This is definitely one of the fastest things that I’ve ever seen,” she said.
The test positivity rate for COVID-19 also has jumped quickly, from around 5 percent at the end of last week—a figure that public health officials have said is a threshold of concern—to more than 11 percent as of Tuesday.
“Hospitalizations have continued to rise over the last month,” said Memark. “We are not at levels like our first two large surges, but we do see steady increases, and the hospitals remain busy. Reports are that the majority of folks hospitalized continue to be unvaccinated.”
CDC data as of Tuesday indicated that there have been 1,959 new cases of COVID-19 in Cobb over the last seven days, representing an increase of 154 percent over the last week.
There also have been 86 COVID-related hospital admissions and 14 deaths in that time in the county, according to the CDC figures.
Memark said that while Omicron transmission is very fast, that the symptoms thus far are milder than the previous Delta variant and the original COVID-19 virus.
“Right now we’re trying to keep this down as best we can,” she said in the video. “My fear is we’re going to have so many more people infected that we’re going to have a surge in the hospitalizations as well, and that’s one of our greatest concerns.”
Memark urged citizens to get boosters for their vaccines, not to gather with others if they are sick, to wear masks in public and avoid crowds, in particular to avoid pressures on hospitals.
“This is not easy to do during the holidays, but we hope that this will pass quickly, and we don’t have too many seriously sick,” said Memark, adding that most of those hospitalized are not vaccinated.
The Omicron variant has spread rapidly since its identification a month ago to the World Health Organization, and is considered the dominant COVID-19 strain in the U.S., making up more than 70 percent of new cases.
Many of those cases are occurring in the Northeast and Midwest states, which has some of the highest increases in the country despite having some of the highest vaccination rates.
According to the Georgia Department of Public Health, 63 percent of Cobb residents have received at least one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, while 58 percent have had two doses or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Memark said less than 15 percent, however, have received booster shots. “Getting your booster shot for COVID-19 will help boost your antibodies,” she said. “Please do this.”
Cobb and Douglas Public Health continues to offer free COVID-19 tests and vaccines. For information and to book appointments, please click here.
