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Thursday, November 12, 2026Nov 12

Hospitalizations up again in Georgia as some schools reopen

Nurse Manager Betsy Ross inspects a patient room Monday, July 20, 2020, inside the mobile COVID-19 unit at the Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, Ga. The unit, constructed from modular buildings by the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency went into operation Tuesday, July 21, 2020, amid high numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations across the state. (Scott Rogers/The Gainesville Times via AP)
Nurse Manager Betsy Ross inspects a patient room Monday, July 20, 2020, inside the mobile COVID-19 unit at the Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, Ga. The unit, constructed from modular buildings by the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency went into operation Tuesday, July 21, 2020, amid high numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations across the state. (Scott Rogers/The Gainesville Times via AP) Nurse Manager Betsy Ross inspects a patient room Monday, July 20, 2020, inside the mobile COVID-19 unit at the Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, Ga. The unit, constructed from modular buildings by the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency went into operation Tuesday, July 21, 2020, amid high numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations across the state. (Scott Rogers/The Gainesville Times via AP)

ATLANTA (AP) – The number of Georgians hospitalized with COVID-19 set another record Tuesday, while deaths and new confirmed cases of the respiratory illness remained at high levels.

Some Georgia students stepped into school for the first time since March as southwest Georgia’s Mitchell County and northwest Georgia’s Chattooga County became the first two traditional school districts to open for in-person instruction.

Other schools keep putting off their start dates or announcing they will begin class online, with Burke County, Wayne County and Wilcox County among those announcing delays in recent days. Gainesville is the latest system to shift to all-virtual instruction to start the year.

Republican U.S Rep. Jody Hice announced he had gone into quarantine after contact with Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and a second person. Hice said he had no symptoms and is feeling fine. Hice’s Washington, D.C., staff also went into quarantine.

The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Georgia pushed past 182,000, although experts say many cases are never confirmed. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Georgia has risen from 3,420 new cases per day on July 15 to 3,671 on Thursday. The number has been at an apparent plateau for about the last week, but is not yet clearly going down.