The Georgia House Democratic Caucus gathered experts from Emory University, the Emory School of Medicine and a metro Atlanta health department for an hour-long briefing on the state of COVID-19 in Georgia. The event happened amid rising numbers of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
On Aug. 26, the day of the forum, Georgia reported 7,917 new cases, 87 deaths and a 10.1% positivity rate. Two months earlier, on June 25, those numbers were just 256 new cases and two deaths with a 9.7% positivity rating.
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“We had a COVID going away party in June. Two weeks later, delta arrived,” said Dr. Janet Memark, director of Cobb-Douglas Public Health.
Dr. Carlos Del Rio, chair of the Department of Global Health and an infectious disease specialist at Emory School of Medicine, said Americans are getting a crash course in science on something that is very complicated, and changing almost daily.
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“What has changed very dramatically is the virus,” he said. “The virus we’re facing today, this delta variant, is very different from the original Wuhan virus. The original Wuhan virus is a Ford Fiesta. This virus is a Ferrari.”
Del Rio said one person with Wuhan virus could infect two or three people. With the delta variant’s higher transmissibility, one person can infect as many as eight people at a time.
Memark said most new hospitalizations are among unvaccinated people. Del Rio called the current wave is a major surge. Hospitals are full and running out of beds.
That is having an impact on non-COVID-19 patients, said Dr. Pretesh Patel, Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology at Emory University.
“If a patient has been diagnosed with cancer for the first time, which of course is one of the most terrifying things you can ever experience, now we’re asking you to come by yourself into the hospital to meet with your doctors. This is one of the unintended consequences of this and it’s heartbreaking.”
It also means screening tests for highly treatable forms of cancer like breast cancer and colon cancer may be delayed or cancelled. He’s concerned it will lead to an increase in the number of people who die from cancers that might otherwise be stopped.
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Then there’s the growing impact on children.
Memark said her office is seeing a very high and very fast acceleration in cases in children between age five and 17. Del Rio says it’s the delta variant showing up in children with pediatric hospital across the country reporting children in the ICU.
An Aug. 27 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says nearly one third of adolescents aged 12–17 years hospitalized with COVID-19 during March 2020–April 2021 required intensive care, and 5% of those hospitalized required intubation and mechanical ventilation. An estimated 2 million COVID-19 cases and approximately 300 associated deaths have been reported among children aged 5–17 years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Del Rio expects to see vaccines for kids by December. In the meantime, he said the way to protect kids is to surround them with vaccinated adults and people who are wearing masks.
“At the end of the day, I think we can agree that protecting our kids is protecting our most valuable asset.”
A video of the forum is available here.
Dana Lynn McIntyre is a Staff Reporter with The Augusta Press. You can reach her at dana@theaugustapress.com.
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