ATLANTA – Georgia ranked 47th in the nation in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new state scorecard released by the Commonwealth Fund Thursday.
The Commonwealth Fund is a national non-profit that takes left-leaning positions on health care access and quality.
The organization releases state health system scorecards annually. This year, it added seven COVID-related measures to its evaluation.
The states that best managed COVID were Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont. Only Mississippi, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Alabama ranked worse than Georgia in responding to COVID, according to the new analysis.
According to the new scorecard, only a quarter of adults in Georgia were fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID by the end of March 2022, while the national average was 37%.
Georgia also saw higher rates of “excess deaths” than the U.S. average from February 2020 to April of this year, with 411 excess deaths per 100,000 people, compared to a national average of 345 per 100,000.
The excess death indicator evaluates the actual number of deaths against what is expected based on past trends. That includes COVID-related deaths as well as deaths due to non-COVID reasons.
“The death toll from COVID is high and extends beyond deaths directly attributed to the virus,” the report contends. “Because the pandemic disrupted their ability to get timely care … many more people died sooner than they otherwise would have.”
Those effects were particularly pronounced for Black, indigenous and Latinx people in the first year of the pandemic, Jesse Baumgartner, a research associate at the Commonwealth Fund, said during a press conference.
Georgia had far higher rates of hospitalization for COVID than the national average, with 1,976 confirmed COVID case admissions per 100,000 people from August 2020 to March 2022. In the same period, the national average was 1,443 per 100,000.
The report card also looked at how many days hospital intensive care units were at or above 80% capacity between August 2020 and March 2022.
Georgia ICUs were at least 80% full for 375 days in that period, compared to the national average of just 112 days in the same timeframe.
Georgia fared better than many states on the rates of COVID-related nursing home deaths.
Georgia suffered 89 deaths per 1,000 nursing beds from May 2020 until March 2022. The national average was 94 per 1,000 beds, putting Georgia in 21st place for that measure.
And while the state’s overdose death rates increased during 2020 in line with national trends, Georgia’s rate did not increase as much as in most other Southern states.
“Deaths reached record levels in nearly every state in 2020 … as people dealt with disrupted treatment access and a much more dangerous drug supply increasingly composed of stronger synthetic opioids like fentanyl,” Baumgartner said.
“States that entered the pandemic with stronger health systems fared better,” said Dr. David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund. “States need to invest in their health-care infrastructure. Having a strong health-care system is the best preparation for any public health crisis.”
Gov. Brian Kemp’s office disagreed with the report’s conclusions about Georgia’s performance and health system.
“Governor Kemp prioritized protecting lives and livelihoods throughout the pandemic,” said Katie Byrd, a spokeswoman for the governor. “He was responsive to the needs of the medical community, hospital systems, and insight from our Department of Public Health, and he kept keeping Georgians safe the utmost priority.”
Byrd pointed to a 24/7 on-call system to help ensure hospitals and others had what they needed during the pandemic.
“And now, unlike any other state and because of his measured approach, our economy is thriving, and Georgians are enjoying a safe, appropriate return to normalcy,” Byrd said. “It would be inexcusable to suggest that the state didn’t do everything it could to mitigate loss of life from the outset.”
Democratic Party of Georgia spokesman Max Flugrath said Kemp should have responded to the pandemic by expanding the state’s Medicaid program.
“During the uncertainty of a global pandemic, Democrats would have done what Brian Kemp has repeatedly refused to do – expand access to health care for vulnerable Georgians,” Flugrath said. “By expanding Medicaid, Georgia could provide health-care coverage for over 500,000 people, create over 64,000 jobs, and send crucial support to rural hospitals, two of which closed during the pandemic.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.