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Infection source for recent Georgia virus patients a mystery
State setting up isolation area at state park
03062020 CDC
The headquarters for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is shown on Friday, March 6, 2020 in Atlanta. - photo by Associated Press

ATLANTA — Health officials say they don’t know how the most recent COVID-19 infections happened in Georgia, though all of the cases are in metropolitan Atlanta.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said late Sunday the people in the four recent cases are from Fulton, Cobb and Cherokee counties, but have no connection to each other. They were hospitalized as of Sunday.

Test results by the state health lab are awaiting confirmation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Georgia officials, meanwhile, are turning part of a state park into a site where they can isolate and monitor coronavirus patients, the governor’s office said.

The office stressed in a news release Monday that state officials are making the preparations at Hard Labor Creek State Park in Morgan County “out of an abundance of caution,” and no patients are currently scheduled to be transferred there.

Officials have already installed seven emergency trailers at the park about 50 miles east of Atlanta. The Department of Public Safety will provide security at the site once it is established, the governor’s office said.

Eleven Georgia residents have now tested positive for the COVID-19, and five of those tests have been federally confirmed.

Cases of the disease caused by the new coronavirus have been confirmed in a total of five people in Fulton, Cobb and Polk counties. The Polk County resident had previously been reported as from Floyd County, the department said.

Those from Fulton County include a 56-year-old man who had returned to Atlanta from Milan, Italy, on Feb. 22, and his son.

The 46-year-old Polk County woman had gone twice to a Georgia emergency center with flu-like symptoms in February but was originally turned down for testing because she had not traveled abroad or had known of any contact with travelers from abroad.

Dozens of Americans on a cruise ship off the California coast are expected to arrive Monday night or Tuesday for quarantine and testing at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, officials said Sunday. They include 34 Georgia residents.