Peach Tree Times

The number of infections from COVID-19 continues to rise in Georgia as patients hospitalized with the virus rose almost 50% over the last month, state health officials said. 

More than 1,200 people were hospitalized in Georgia Dec. 20 with respiratory illness. It remains below the 6,000 cases reached in early September, but above the 824 patients hospitalized on Nov. 22, according to reports.

"We are fortunate that our cases are relatively low right now in south Georgia, but based on what is happening all across the country, we do not expect that to last long," Scott Steiner, CEO of Albany-based Phoebe Putney Health System, said in a statement.

The Georgia Department of Public Health said the biggest rise in cases was in the Atlanta metro area and the suburbs just northwest of the city. According to a Fox 5 report, the GDPH reported nearly 8,000 confirmed cases over the weekend or an average of 2,500 per day. That number had nearly doubled in a week and is more than triple the recent low of early November.

Daily cases in Georgia have reached more than 23,000, according to figures on the state's Health Department website as of Dec. 30. 

Hospitalized COVID-19 patients are overwhelmingly unvaccinated. At the four-hospital Northeast Georgia Health System based in Gainesville, 83% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients were unvaccinated on Sunday, as was every single COVID-19 patient in an intensive care unit.