MACON, Ga. — Since the COVID-19 pandemic first appeared in Georgia, the state Department of Public Health (DPH) has confirmed nearly 58,000 cases, but that's playing out in different ways across the state.
In Bibb County and Houston County, the story lately has been all about consistency.
The average number of new confirmed cases in Bibb County has stayed below 10 from mid-May to June 12, according to DPH data.
It's more of the same in Houston County, where the average number of new daily confirmed cases has been pegged at about 5 from late May to June 12, according to the DPH.
In both cases, you may notice a day where the number of 'new' cases appears to be negative. That's not a graphing error.
The North Central Health District confirmed there were a few days they mistakenly recorded case data and had to clean it up later, leading to some days where the case total appears to fall.
What about at the state level?
This is a graph of Georgia Department of Public Health data current as of June 14th.
The state warns that the last 14 days of date, the part marked in orange, are incomplete because of the way they collect and graph the data.
The trend line shows the average number of new daily confirmed cases every day since February, per the DPH.
There have been some big fluctuations in it over the past eight weeks.
The average peaked around 760 new cases per day in mid-April, then took a big drop as Governor Kemp's statewide restrictions began to be lifted.
Soon after, though, it climbed again to about 700 new cases in mid-May, dropped again, and then went back up to around 720 on June 1, the last day before we hit the orange zone of incomplete day.
That still doesn't tell the whole story, though.
While the raw numbers appear to be moving all over the place, the percentage of positive virus tests has been consistently dropping as the state continues to expand its testing.
The DPH has been publishing some testing figures since mid-March, but only recently made it clear that both antigen and antibody tests were included in that 'total' figure.
Antibody tests are used to determine if somebody likely had the virus at some point in the past.
Antigen tests determine if somebody currently has COVID-19.
In late May, the DPH started releasing the exact total of its antigen tests.
Since then, the percentage of positive results from those tests has dropped from about 10.2% to roughly 9.4%.
A few days of data are missing from our chart, but the trend's direction is clear.
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