It wasn’t easy for Jenny Hunter to send her kids back to school this fall, but she knew it was the better of two impossible choices for her family.

Minutes after hanging up, Hunter received a text from her son: His high school would be temporarily closing for two weeks after 14 students tested positive for the coronavirus.

"I was not surprised at all," Hunter said.

Harry Heiman, a professor at Georgia State University's School of Public Health, said that with high numbers of hospitalizations and full ICUs in regions across the state, the death rate is likely to continue rising.

"Georgia is very much the poster child for what happens when leadership take a hands-off approach to managing a pandemic," Heiman said.

About 10% of those tests are coming back positive, meaning that Georgia is among the 36 states that don’t meet the World Health Organization's recommended 5% average positivity rate to reopen businesses.

Ben Lopman, a professor of epidemiology at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, said the state's approach has been "cavalier.".

After declaring a statewide public health emergency in March, Georgia Gov.

Brian Kemp dictated that Georgia beaches must reopen, and declared any decision-makers who refused to follow these orders would face prison and/or fines," Mayor Shirley Sessions said at the time.

Local officials said they were blindsided again weeks later when Kemp announced plans to reopen some Georgia businesses, including gyms, bowling alleys, and hair and nail salons, despite no evidence of a 14-day downward trend in cases – a metric that was recommended by the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and others criticized the move.

In April, the state set up a temporary hospital at one of the nation's largest convention centers, the Georgia World Congress Center, but wound down operations in May.

New cases in Georgia began to accelerate in mid-June, according to data from the Georgia Department of Public Health.

That's when the governor signed two executive orders that extended the state's public health emergency and existing COVID-19 safety measures. .

Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health and a former 11-year Georgia resident, said he was initially shocked that Georgia would "go out of its way" to prevent local jurisdictions from implementing their own mandates, especially in light of the preponderance of public health experts in the state, which is home to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We have not controlled transmission in the community," Lopman, the Emory epidemiology professor, said.

Meanwhile, several school districts in Georgia gained national attention last week when photos of maskless students and crowded hallways went viral on social media.

4, 2020, at North Paulding High School in Dallas, Ga. (Photo: AP)

Despite the outbreaks, Kemp said Monday that school reopening was going "well."

that are aligned with what we know works," Heiman, the Georgia state professor, said

The temperature is high," he said

Moving forward, Jenny Hunter said she'd like to see her kids' schools implement face mask policies

Hunter said she encourages her kids to wear their masks but isn't there to control it at school