Georgia's public health department is impacted by cuts to CDC, Health and Human Services

Federal funding cuts could affect how Georgia’s Department of Public Health handles contact tracing for COVID-19 and other measures.

According to spokesperson for the agency, Nancy Nydam, 180 people were laid off from the state agency last week after the federal government terminated several public health grants to states.  

The grants, distributed through the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had been initiated in 2020 to help public health departments nationwide respond to the spread of COVID-19. 

Since then, the Georgia Department of Public Health has expensed $543.5 million to expand its surveillance capabilities for infectious diseases, improve lab capacity with an aim to prepare for future disease outbreaks and fund vaccine outreach into underserved communities.  

The grants were set to expire in the coming years, but the agency had been awarded millions more this year to continue work under the Immunization and Vaccines for Children program, a program to address COVID health disparities rural and minority communities and the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases, or ELC, program.  

As of March 27, the remaining $334.2 million from the grants was terminated from the department budget and just over $40 million set aside to pay external vendors will either be terminated or expensed for work that’s already been done, according to a planning document from Nydam.  

RELATED: Georgia's public health community warns of fallout from proposed federal funding cuts 

Staff terminated as of March 27 almost all conducted COVID contact tracing, the document said. It says core DPH services are being minimally impacted.

On the ground, the cuts mean DPH will reduce or discontinue covid testing kits and kiosks. Local health departments, which are located in every Georgia county, will still offer COVID-19 vaccines as they’re provided and recommended according to DPH.  

Other local impacts are still being assessed including impacts on staff at the level of public health districts.  

DPH has previously worked with the Community Organized Relief Effort, which also works in other states and countries, to set up mobile and in-home immunizations. But CORE has also managed emergency response to Hurricanes Helene and Idalia, and expanded to offer Flu vaccines. Its mission has shifted “as the pandemic continued to reveal and deepen gaps in equitable health access,” according to the CORE website.  

The state’s partnership with CORE on COVID vaccine services is likely to be affected as a result of these recent cuts.  

The last big spike in COVID cases was last summer, followed by another rise in cases in early February, according to wastewater surveillance data from the CDC.  

That kind of data collection could be severely scaled back, or end, following the cuts. Already public access to information on COVID cases is difficult. A statewide dashboard run by the state Department of Public Health with county specific numbers hasn’t been updated since last March.