Georgia reports over 450 new cases Tuesday as state labs are ‘overloaded’

The Georgia Department of Public Health at 7:25 p.m. Tuesday confirmed 29,892 cases of COVID-19 in the state, up by 294 from Tuesday at 12:25 p.m, as the state deals with overwhelmed testing labs.

From 7 p.m. Monday to 7 p.m. Tuesday, 450 new cases were reported by the state.

Statewide, 1,295 people have now died from the novel coronavirus, an increase of 37 reported deaths since 12:25 Tuesday.

The Georgia Public Health Laboratory and private labs have processed a total of 200,814 COVID-19 tests as of Tuesday afternoon. That’s up from the 183,012 tests reported Monday evening. However, the Georgia Department of Public Health reported only 10 new tests Monday.

In an interview with Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Grant Blankenship, Dr. Phillip Coule, the chief medical officer of Augusta University Health, said that labs processing tests are “overloaded.” The university has helped expand Georgia’s testing capacity in recent weeks.

“The goal was to collect so many specimens and send it into the system that we have overloaded the labs. And that is currently the case,” Coule said. “And so we are taking a pause to some of our mobile testing to allow us to make sure that we’re caught up and that we are able to return results in a timely fashion, because the frustration created by delayed results is something we want to avoid.”

The state health department reports 5,656 people have been hospitalized due to the virus.

The Georgia Department of Public Health recently began updating its coronavirus statistics nearly every hour.

State health officials have not provided a breakdown of the residents tested for COVID-19 in each county. The state is also not tracking the number of people who have recovered from COVID-19.

For 613 cases, the state is reporting the counties as “unknown.” The person may be homeless or medical professionals may not have entered the person’s county of residence into the state’s electronic database, health officials have previously said.

The state health department also reported that 1,029 non-Georgia residents tested positive for COVID-19. State health officials previously said these numbers account for out of state residents whose healthcare provider is located in Georgia.

Breakdown by County

This story was originally published May 5, 2020 at 1:11 PM.

Nick Wooten

Columbus Ledger-Enquirer

Nick Wooten is the Accountability/Investigative reporter for the Ledger-Enquirer where he is responsible for covering several topics, including Georgia politics. His work may also appear in the Macon Telegraph. Nick was given the Georgia Press Association’s 2021 Emerging Journalist award for his coverage of elections, COVID-19 and Columbus’ LGBTQ+ community. Before joining McClatchy, he worked for The (Shreveport La.) Times covering city government and investigations. He is a graduate of Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.