The COVID Digest, 09Jan2023

Go Dawgs!

I am writing this newsletter during the college football championship game so Georgia is very much on my mind tonight. Exciting to see them doing so well.

There’s lots to talk about with Georgia and COVID-19 though. We know that cases are probably not a reliable metric anymore given how many people are ignoring symptoms and skipping a test altogether, but also many are testing at home and not reporting their results. Therefore, hospitalizations and test positivity might be better indicators of how the landscape is changing. Let’s begin our walkthrough of COVID-19 data by looking at the COVID-19 patient census graph from the Georgia Geospatial Information Office. This graph shows statewide data and identifies the number of patients who are currently admitted in a hospital for COVID-19.

We can see two important things from this graph: the current patient census is now greater than the peak observed in summer 2022 and it appears to be increasing rapidly.