Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, Georgia’s confirmed coronavirus deaths on Friday afternoon surpassed 30,000.
For the first time, the state has added 10,000 deaths in less than six months. The march from 10,000 deaths, reached in January 2021, to 20,000, reached in September, took just under eight months.
The state Department of Public Health’s daily report Friday showed an increase of 58 deaths of Georgia patients with a confirmed COVID diagnosis, reaching a total for the state of 30,049.
DPH designated an additional 5,733 Georgians as “probable” COVID deaths, though those were not confirmed with the gold-standard PCR test. The probable and confirmed deaths together total 35,782 Georgia deaths of COVID patients since the pandemic began in March 2020.
The rate of deaths in Georgia is currently declining, after the omicron death surge peaked on February 13.
The most recent 10,000 deaths include the wave of the omicron variant this winter, as well as a large portion of the deaths from the delta variant.
Georgia’s death count is now more deaths than if the entire city of McDonough were wiped out.
Vaccines have slowed the spread of the disease, and without them the toll would be far higher. A study of COVID-19’s spread through November of 2021 found that 1.1 million more Americans would have died if not for the vaccines, according to the Commonwealth Fund. However, the new virus variants that have evolved are enormously infectious, and they also partly evade the vaccines.
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