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VERIFY | Is Georgia the sickest state in the country?

People are staying home from work, kids are staying home from school, and chances are you cringe every time someone sneezes.
Photo courtesy of Kinsa

The flu remains a hot topic, especially in Georgia.

People are staying home from work, kids are staying home from school, and chances are you cringe every time someone sneezes.

But is it worse in Georgia than anywhere else in the country?

An app, Kinsa, is claiming Georgia is the sickest state in the country, so we wanted to verify that claim. The app is aimed to help keep families said by asking users to upload their temperature when they get sick.

A spokesperson for Kinsa told 11Alive for the past 3 flu seasons their data has tracked CDC’s to a very high degree of accuracy. While it takes the CDC days, and sometimes weeks to update, Kinsa said their information is aggregated in real-time.

However, the app depends on people voluntarily uploading their data. Right now, there are 1 million people who have downloaded the app. Last week, Kinsa saw 35,000 temperature readings and 22,000 symptom inputs each day.

The means Kinsa’s methodology isn’t scientific. So, let’s look at the science.

The CDC does categorize Georgia as a state with high flu activity but there are also over 25 other states within the same category.

Flu deaths are higher in Texas than in Georgia - though both states had around 1,000 people hospitalized in the last weekly flu report.

So, we can verify that Georgia is one of the states hit hardest but specific data checkpoints show we are not the worst by any of these measures. This means we verify that claim as FALSE.

11Alive talked to Nancy Nydem at the Georgia Health Department and she said they will update their flu death numbers on Friday. As of Wednesday, she does expect those numbers to increase.

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