The Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) on Tuesday made significant additions to its closely watched coronavirus dashboard, adding daily and cumulative antigen positive cases of COVID-19 and a cumulative number of probable deaths linked to the disease.
The additions, promised for weeks, provide a fuller picture of Georgia’s COVID-19 epidemic. Before Tuesday, Georgia published only cases confirmed by molecular PCR tests, considered the most accurate form of testing, and the deaths of people with confirmed cases.
But in recent months, clinics, hospitals, long-term care facilities and other providers have deployed rapid antigen tests and the results of these tests were not published daily on the state’s dashboard. Critics have said the missing antigen test data created an incomplete picture of the virus' spread just as antigen tests are becoming more widely used and cases of the virus have started to climb once again.
Antigen tests detect proteins on the surface of the virus and can deliver results within minutes. Fast results can help lead to faster isolation of infected persons and limit spread.
But there is a tradeoff for the speed. Antigen tests are less accurate than molecular PCR tests. They come with higher rates of false positive and false negative results, and for those reasons, antigen positives are considered “probable” cases, not confirmed.
DPH had promised to post daily and cumulative probable cases in early October and then by the end of last month, but the agency encountered challenges with reporting the data daily, officials have said.
On Tuesday, DPH reported 1,738 net new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 369 antigen positive cases. To date, Georgia has reported 364,589 confirmed cases and 29,937 antigen positive cases.
On its website, DPH said probable COVID-19 deaths include people who died and had a positive antigen tests or had “compatible illness and known close contact to a case” and the person was reported to the state as deceased by health officials, a coroner or medical examiner. Other probable deaths include people whose cause of death was identified as COVID-19 on their death certificate or that there is evidence COVID-19 contributed to the person’s death.
The state also reported 30 net new confirmed deaths on Tuesday. So far, DPH has reported 8,029 confirmed deaths and 450 probable deaths attributed to COVID-19.
It was not immediately clear Tuesday if DPH might later reclassify probable deaths as confirmed via further investigation.
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