{"id":22948,"date":"2021-02-01T20:56:15","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T01:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=22948"},"modified":"2021-02-01T21:05:16","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T02:05:16","slug":"coronavirus-update-19-cases-of-significantly-more-contagious-variant-found-in-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=22948","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus Update: 19 cases of ‘significantly more contagious’ variant found in Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nineteen cases of a highly contagious COVID-19 variant originating from Europe have been identified in metro Atlanta, state public-health officials confirmed on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early studies suggest the COVID-19 variant is \u201csignificantly more contagious\u201d than the original coronavirus strain that sparked a global pandemic last March, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH). Georgia is among 30 states reporting cases of the variant so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 19 variant cases in Georgia have been reported in several metro-Atlanta counties including Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb, Cobb, Clayton, Cherokee, Carroll, Douglas and Paulding. It has infected Georgians from ages 15 to 61, DPH said in a news release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe must ensure we are taking every precaution right now to prevent transmission of COVID and to avoid a surge in hospitalizations and loss of life,\u201d said state Public Health<\/a> Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toomey added the COVID-19 variant now spreading in Georgia will likely become the \u201cdominant strain\u201d of coronavirus in the U.S. by March after originating in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DPH officials are warning Georgians<\/a> to follow COVID-19 safety measures even more strictly since laboratories have only tested a small number of samples for the variant so far, giving public-health experts a limited view of where the variant might be spreading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public-health officials are urging Georgians to wear masks<\/a>, wash hands and social distance to help curb the highly contagious virus\u2019 spread at a time when COVID-19 positive case rates and deaths have started trending down after grueling winter outbreaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The variant\u2019s discovery in Georgia also comes as state officials, hospitals and pharmacies rush to distribute tight supplies of COVID-19 vaccines to health-care workers, nursing-home residents and staff, first responders and people ages 65 and older.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna have stressed that their COVID-19 vaccines \u201cappear to work\u201d against the variant, according to DPH.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 750,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in Georgia as of Sunday afternoon, with nearly 160,000 more reported positive antigen tests indicating likely positive results. The virus has killed 12,570 Georgians.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nineteen cases of a highly contagious COVID-19 variant originating from Europe have been identified in metro Atlanta, state public-health officials confirmed on Monday. Early studies suggest the COVID-19 variant is \u201csignificantly more contagious\u201d than the original coronavirus strain that sparked a global pandemic last March, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH). Georgia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7286],"tags":[8481,8480,8474],"class_list":["post-22948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-sun","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}