GNR Public Health Director, Dr. Audrey Arona, recently had some good news to share about COVID-19, but she also tempered it with a warning.
The disease, which prompted shutdowns in 2020 and has continued to linger made its presence felt since then, is evolving, but in a way that health experts are used to seeing with viruses.
COVID may not be going totally away, but the case numbers are declining and it is becoming less likely to kill a person, Arona explained.
“The one thing I like to tell everyone is that COVID is responding like a normal virus where the virus has become more transmissible over time, but less deadly,” Arona said. “That makes sense from a virus standpoint because viruses want to reproduce, OK, and so if it kills its host, that host can’t (spread it).
“So, typically ... the viruses will become more transmissible and easier to infect each other, but less deadly and that’s what we’re seeing.”
Arona talked about where the area was at with COVID during a virtual conversation with state Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn, about Monkeypox.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists Gwinnett County as being at the medium transmission level. The most recent case numbers released by the Georgia Department of Public Health came out on Aug. 31, with the next set of numbers not due to be released until Wednesday.
Georgia DPH reported on Aug. 31 that Gwinnett had a seven-day case average of 174.9 new cases per day. That is down significantly from late July when the county’s seven-day average was hovering between 280 and 301 cases per day.
Statewide, Georgia had a seven-day average of 1987.1 cases per day as of Aug. 31. In late July, the state was seeing seven-day averages that were around 3,000 to 3,200 cases per day. On July 28 alone, the state received reports of more than 3,900 confirmed new cases.
“Ninety percent or more, nationally and in Georgia, are due to this BA.5, which is the most recent Omicron variant,” Arona said.
But, despite the good news about COVID being less deadly, Arona said there are still reasons to be cautious about COVID-19.
“I don’t want anyone to really think that we’re out of the woods with COVID because COVID is still a different animal,” she said. “It causes a lot more illness than even influenza and we have the fall coming where the colder temperatures are coming in (and) people are gather more indoors.
“So we just have to be really careful about spreading COVID when don’t have to.”
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I'm a Crawford Long baby who grew up in Marietta and eventually wandered to the University of Southern Mississippi for college. Earned a BA in journalism (double minor in political science and history). Previously worked in Florida and Clayton County.
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