Before Friday, Cobb County had reported only one death of a person under the age of 20 due to COVID-19.
But a one-year-old boy with a pre-existing health condition was included in Friday’s reported deaths by the Georgia Department of Public Health, making him the youngest victim in the state of a virus that has now claimed 387 lives in Cobb.
The only other information about the boy was that he was African-American, according to Georgia Health News, which also reported that more than 4,000 children under age 4 in the state have been infected, and that Georgia has a COVID-19 case rate for children that’s higher than the national average.
Prior to the one-year-old’s death, the youngest Cobb COVID fatality had been a 19-year-old male whose race was unknown, according to figures compiled by Cobb County government’s GIS office.
While Cobb has seen a spike, along with the rest of Georgia, in confirmed cases of the virus this summer, especially among younger age groups, the deaths are still occurring mostly among older and unhealthier populations.
GIS figures through Friday show that roughly 75 percent of the Cobb COVID deaths have been people 70 and older (as shown in the pie chart above).
At least 311 of Cobb’s 387 deaths have been people who had at least one underlying health issue, or a comorbidity, while 47 have not. The comorbidity status of 29 other victims is unknown.
A total of 48 people each in the 60-69 age range and the 18-59 age range have died in Cobb County, which has the second-highest death total in Georgia. Fulton County now has 503 reported deaths.
The age groups with the highest number of confirmed cases in Cobb continue to be between 20-60. A total of 1,846 cases have been reported for youths 20 and under, while the oldest age groups have the fewest number of cases.
The rising case figures over the summer prompted Cobb school superintendent Chris Ragsdale to start the school year online. Cobb now has 16,630 positive cases, but he’s reluctant to give a date for students returning to school.
The key metric he’s looking at is a 14-day average of cases per 100,000 people, with anything over 100 cases considered high community spread. As of Friday, Cobb’s 14-day average is 227.
That figure had been well above 300 cases per 100,000, and Ragsdale said he was aiming for an average between 100-200 cases before deciding to allow a return to classroom learning.
Georgia has 265,372 confirmed COVID cases and 5,471 deaths. On Friday, Georgia DPH reported 2,383 more cases and 79 additional deaths.
But date-of-onset and date-of-death figures—as opposed to when cases and deaths are reported—have been on a downward trend in the state and Cobb since mid-July and early August, respectively.
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- 60 percent of all East Cobb COVID cases reported in July
- The East Cobb Open for Business Directory
- East Cobb News COVID-19 Resource Page
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