The daily status report from the Georgia Department of Public Health indicates that over the 24-hour period since yesterday’s report, Cobb County added 78 confirmed new cases, one death, and 5 new hospitalizations from COVID-19.

This brings the totals for the county to 4,347 new confirmed cases, 237 deaths and 830 hospitalizations.

In terms of ranking, Cobb is fourth place in confirmed cases and hospitalizations among the top four counties (which also include Gwinnett, Fulton and DeKalb), but second place in deaths. behind only Fulton.

Bear in mind, however, these are not per capita numbers, and reflect the large populations of the top four counties. The hardest-hit counties in terms of cases, hospitalization and deaths per 100,000 are in rural counties in South Georgia, plus Hancock County.

For example, Echols County, a low population county on the Florida line, has 4,460 cases per 100,000, compared with 550 cases per 100,000 for Cobb County.

The daily status report

The daily status report from the Georgia Department of Public Health is posted daily at 3 p.m.

In addition to the total confirmed cases, hospitalization and death, the report includes other information such as demographic breakdown by race/ethnicity, sex and age.

You can also download the data in CSV format at this link, so you can open it in a spreadsheet and build different views of the data yourself.

There is also a guide to understanding the data here.

The Georgia Department of Public Health describes the data collection process as follows:

The Daily Status Report is updated once daily at 3 p.m. Data are reported to the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) from numerous labs, hospitals and providers in various ways.

Electronic Laboratory Reports (ELR) are data files transmitted to DPH that contain patient identifiers, test information and results. Individual “case” reports may also be submitted through DPH’s secure web portal, SendSS, from healthcare providers and other required reporters. These reports often contain more specific patient information. In either reporting scenario, data may be incomplete.

Data displayed on the DPH Daily Status Report reflect the information transmitted to DPH, but may not reflect all current tests or cases due to timing of testing and data reporting