South Fulton Today

South Georgia has had a relatively low rate of COVID infection and hasn't been much touched by the Omicron variant, but experts are wondering how much longer that will last.

South Georgia has been fortunate, Scott Steiner, CEO of Phoebe Putney Health System in Albany, said in a statement shortly after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that COVID will continue to surge nationwide.

“This week, the CDC warned of expected substantial growth in COVID cases nationwide over the next week, likely followed by an extended surge, fueled by the ongoing delta variant and predicted rapid growth of the omicron variant," Steiner said in his Friday, Dec. 17, statement. "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 Phoebe Putney Health System | facebook.com/PhoebePutney

Steiner said he "strongly" encouraged everyone to receive COVID vaccines and booster shots, "and please be cautious as you travel and gather over the holidays."

"By doing so you will not only protect yourself and your loved ones, you will be supporting our healthcare warriors," Steiner continued. "They have served you so admirably over the last 21 months, and we certainly do not want them – and our communities – to endure another major surge."

Three days after Steiner's statement, Fox 5 Atlanta reported that the number of patients hospitalized with COVID was up almost 50% in Georgia in the past month and that the number of confirmed infections continued to surge. The spike brought the seven-day average to a little more than 2,100, numbers not seen since early October.

The Fox news story linked to a Twitter post by Mercer University microbiology professor Dr. Amber Schmidtke that compared what's happening with COVID in Georgia to the playing tactics of former English football great David Beckham.

"When COVID-19 bends it like Beckham in Georgia," Schmidtke said in her Dec. 20 Twitter post. "What's different about this surge is that whereas past surges have largely spared the Atlanta metro due to more robust public health policies, this time Atlanta leads the surge for cases."

Schmidtke's post included graphs with information from Georgia Department of Public Health reports that the largest increase in COVID cases has been in Atlanta and its northwest suburbs. That was a dramatic change from last summer when most cases, then of the delta variant, were in south Georgia.

"Not only are cases rising sharply, but the state's ability to measure the size of the problem is rapidly deteriorating," Schmidtke said in a reply to her Twitter post.

COVID and its omicron variant are on the minds of south Georgians traveling over the holiday, WALB News 10 reported on Dec. 22.

"All you can really do is take your precautions and stay safe and be vaccinated with your mask on," Albany State student Diamonnike Haggard, who plans to travel home to see her family this Christmas, said in the WALB news story. "That's all you really can do at this point."