We won’t be publishing today’s full COVID report for Cobb County today because the two-week totals would give a distorted picture of the county’s transmission rate because of more than 9,600 cases statewide from the peak of Omicron that went unreported.

The Georgia Department of Public Health prefaced their report today with the following message:

The COVID-19 Daily Status Report will reflect more than 9,600 newly reported cases (PCR positive and antigen positive combined). Please be advised this number includes a backlog of cases that were not previously reported by a large laboratory. The majority of these are from January 2022 during the peak of the Omicron surge. When accounting for the backlog of positive test results, the number of recent case reports and PCR percent positive is consistent with the previous week’s report and does not indicate a true increase in case numbers or percent positivity.

One caveat here is that although reporting the case rate based on these added cases would give a distorted view of the current state of the pandemic, this means that the pandemic in January was even worse than originally reported.

For more information on COVID in Cobb County and statewide

Cobb & Douglas Public Health runs the case rate on their home page, although it is not updated frequently.

Visit the Cobb & Douglas Public Health home page by following this link

A more frequently updated summary of the statistics on COVID for Cobb County is the CDC’s County View page for Cobb County. The numbers come from the Georgia Department of Public Health but are displayed in a much easier-to-read way than the sprawling GDPH website. From this page you can get the one-week figures on the number of new cases, case rate per 100,000 of population, hospitalizations, deaths, and the percentage change from the previous 7-day period. It also includes data on testing and vaccination rates.

Visit the CDC County View page for Cobb County by following this link

The Georgia Department of Public Health publishes a daily status report on the pandemic every afternoon at around 3 p.m. It’s a comprehensive report with extensive data and charts arranged statewide and by county, that also includes age breakdowns, racial demographics, and data on vaccination and testing.

It isn’t the easiest system to navigate, but it’s worth spending time learning how to use if you’re interested in getting the latest statewide and local data on the state of COVID-19.

Visit the Georgia Department of Public Health Daily Status Report by following this link

To get an overview of how much the pandemic is stressing the hospital systems in terms of ER visits, hospital bed capacity, and ventilator use, there is a Hospital Bed and Ventilator Use report with interactive maps. The map is organized by hospital region, and Cobb County is part of Region N.

Visit the Georgia Hospital Beds and Ventilator Report by following this link

To get data on what percentage of patients in Georgia hospitals were admitted for COVID-19 versus all other causes, there is a Georgia Medical Facility Patient Census. It also reports numbers by statewide and hospital region.

Visit the Georgia Medical Facility Patient Census by following this link