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Georgia Coronavirus Updates: Mass Testing Center Opens As Kemp Restarts Economy
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Even though Gov. Brian Kemp has announced a timeline for some parts of the economy to reopen in the coming days, many Georgia businesses say they are not yet ready.
As of 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 22, there are more than 21,000 cumulative reported COVID-19 cases in Georgia, and about 19% of those have resulted in hospitalizations. At least 846 people, or 4% of those with confirmed cases, have died. More than 94,000 tests have been performed.
Here is the latest coronavirus news in Georgia for Wednesday, April 22, 2020.
As Kemp moves to reopen, some businesses and churches hesitate
Kemp’s order, announced Monday, will allow gyms, bowling alleys, barbershops and other in-person-reliant businesses to get back to “minimum basic operations” starting Friday.
Those operations include things like payroll and other administrative tasks, and come with a list of 20 or so health, safety and social distancing policies that must happen.
In an interview with Erick Erickson on Tuesday, Kemp said Georgians need to view this as a small step in the right direction.
“This is not just throwing the keys out there to every business in the state and open them back up,” he said. “The stipulations with opening are still out there. Many businesses have been able to operate under those guidelines before yesterday and before this Friday.
Local Reaction: As Kemp Moves To Reopen, Some Businesses And Churches Hesitate
The governor also said restaurants can begin in-person dining on Monday, assuming they follow the same protocols.
But most business owners aren’t very eager to open back up while COVID-19 cases continue to climb, the state is still ramping up testing and there is no publicly-released data about the virus’ spread by zip code.
Marshall Hughes owns a barber shop in Macon. He failed to get any of the first round of small business funding from the federal government, and also has a daughter who is a nurse on the frontlines of COVID-19 at Navicent Health in Macon. He said he won’t be opening up his shop any time soon.
"I'm not gonna be used as a guinea pig," Hughes said. "We already have to be hands-on with the customers. We're in close proximity with the customers cutting their hair and talking with them. It's just a set up for failure, from my point of view."
Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta is also not rushing to reopen. The iconic restaurant and bar wrote in a Facebook post that they still didn't feel like conditions were safe, although they would make a move in the next few days to begin doing to-go orders.
"As much as I would like to be open, it's not happening," the post read. "Being closed has not been fun, but it's been the safest, best thing we could do for our staff and our customers."
In Cabbagetown, Little’s Food Store had a more pointed message.
“Y’all can eat in here again when the CDC says it’s ok and I decide it’s ok,” a Facebook post read. “I’m listening to science, not politicians.”
Eater Atlanta has a running list of restaurants that will not open up their dining rooms come Monday, citing concern for the health and safety of employees and patrons.
Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta Bishop Reverend Robert C. Wright said he and other clergy are still in discussion about the right time to reopen churches for worship. Back in mid-March, he canceled all church activities.
Bishop Reginald T. Jackson also issued a statement urging more than 500 AME churches across Georgia to stay closed on Sunday.
"I have issued a directive to the more than 520 AME churches in the Sixth Episcopal District, which comprises the State of Georgia, that none of our churches are to gather for services on this coming Sunday morning," Jackson said.
Gwinnett's Infinite Energy Center turned into mass testing site
The Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale County Health Departments are conducting 800 COVID-19 tests at the event venue Wednesday, the second large-scale testing event in recent weeks.
Residents must make an appointment for the drive-thru testing site.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Fulton County Elections Employee Dies Of COVID-19
An employee in Fulton County’s election office has died from COVID-19 and another was hospitalized, underscoring safety concerns local elections officials face in preparing for the June 9 primary.
Beverly Walker, 62, died April 15 after being hospitalized and put on a ventilator, Fulton Elections Supervisor Richard Barron said. Walker, a registration officer, worked in the division for more than 15 years before retiring in 2012, then returning on a part-time basis.
Walker’s colleague, Registration Chief Ralph Jones Sr., also fell ill and was presumed to be positive for the coronavirus. He was admitted to a hospital where he received oxygen and was discharged the next day, Barron said.
“It’s created quite a bit of sadness in my department,” Barron said of Walker’s passing. “This is pretty real to us.”
Walker’s death and Jones’ illness have personalized the coronavirus pandemic for Barron and his colleagues.
“We’ve kind of asked ourselves, ‘Are we going to be asking the poll workers to do something we wouldn’t do?’” Barron said.
MORE: Georgia Elections Officials Navigate Sea Of Absentee Applications While Polling Places Pull Out
More than half a million absentee ballot applications have been processed for Georgia’s June 9 primary so far, overwhelming local officials who already face a shortage of poll workers and polling places.
While the state begins to ease social distancing restrictions to reopen the economy, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is urging Georgians to vote by mail in this election cycle to combat the spread of COVID-19. To help with the process, the state mailed absentee ballot applications to the state’s 6.9 million active registered voters.
As of Monday, county election officials had approved more than 590,000 absentee ballot requests, with hundreds of thousands more awaiting processing. With seven weeks remaining until the rescheduled election, applications for absentee ballots already double the number of absentee votes cast in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
A GPB News/Georgia News lab survey of nearly three-quarters of the state’s 159 elections directors also finds many counties are left with fewer polling places to accomodate in-person voting.
“We have been inundated,” Fayette County Election Supervisor Floyd Jones said. “We've got applications that are coming in by the bucket loads over here and they come in email nonstop.”
A refresher on the state’s order:
Kemp’s order does a number of things, including:
- allowing elective medical procedures to resume
- allowing gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, barbershops, hair and nail salons and some other previously-shuttered businesses to open starting Friday April 24 under “minimum basic operations"
- defines “minimum basic operations”
- reiterates no business, nonprofit or government shall allow gatherings of 10 or more people unless they can social distance
- reiterates the long list of “critical infrastructure”
- formalizes a partnership with Augusta University Health System for statewide screening and testing
- allows the Department of Public Health to override local health districts if need be
- prevents city and county governments from enacting rules tougher or more lax than the state
That order still means Georgians should stay home unless they are engaging in essential services (food, groceries, medical supplies, etc.), work in critical infrastructure, engage in minimum basic operations or performing necessary travel.
What’s still closed?
Bars, live music venues and amusement parks are closed for now, while the state continues to monitor COVID-19 data.
CDC helping out with contact tracing
The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is funding 650 health workers at state health departments to supplement more than 600 CDC staff already in place, according to director Dr. Robert Redfield.
Redfield says it's part of an effort to expand the nation's public health workforce. The goal is to ensure every community can do enough testing and contact tracing to prevent any big new outbreaks from occurring.
"As we open up, we need to reset our sights on what the primary strategy is to control this virus and that has got to be containment. And that means we have to have the testing and capacity to contain-contain-contain this virus," he says.
Redfield says the CDC is providing $45 million for these new hires, which include epidemiologists, nurses, microbiologists, lab technicians and others — plus a regional director for each of 10 regions. The funding will cover new positions for up to a year.
Georgia needs the help…
In recent weeks, Georgia expanded the definition of who could be tested for COVID-19, deployed members of the Georgia National Guard to aid with testing sites and announced partnerships with both private companies and research universities in the state to expand woefully inadequate testing capacity.
As of Tuesday, April 20, Georgia has tested about 88,000 people for COVID-19. For perspective, that’s about 1.2 Mercedes-Benz Stadiums full of Atlanta United soccer fans, slightly more than the enrollment of the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech combined and about a third of the number of people that travel through Atlanta’s airport on a (pre-coronavirus) daily basis.
“Without enough testing, without enough supplies for doctors and nurses, and without listening to medical professionals, the governor’s actions today will make this crisis even worse and put more Georgians at risk,” Democratic Party of Georgia chairwoman and state Sen. Nikema Williams (D-Atlanta) said.
The governor also announced a partnership with Augusta University to promote a free telemedicine screening app that connects symptomatic Georgians and asymptomatic frontline workers with medical professionals that can refer people to be tested for the coronavirus.
RELATED: Augusta Health Begins Testing 3D-Printed Coronavirus Test
Dr. Kathleen Toomey, the state’s public health commissioner, said the state is actively identifying additional parts of the state that need more testing sites to be set up. Also, her team is working “aggressively” to ramp up contact tracing investigations to find out where and how someone gets infected as well as who else might be at risk of infection to minimize the spread of disease.
Data dispute
Kemp’s decision to ease restrictions is an about-face from interviews at the end of last week, where he said future data would help determine what steps he would take next.
On Friday, there were about 17,000 positive COVID-19 cases, 650 reported deaths and around 72,000 tests performed. Tuesday evening, there were more than 20,000 cases, 818 deaths and just over 88,000 tests.
And the DPH data website has a big caveat underneath each graph that acknowledges a reporting lag between what is actually happening on the ground and what gets sent to the state.
But the state also released a new set of charts showing the “rolling average daily count” of cases and deaths. According to that data, the average number of COVID-19 cases in Georgia has declined since April 14, and average number of deaths has declined since April 7.
That figure is subject to change, as DPH notes illnesses occurring in that time period may not yet be reported. The state has not released the underlying data about what dates they assign cases and deaths to, as well as the detailed census block-level data about where cases and deaths have been reported.
Even so, the White House Coronavirus Task Force guidelines recommend a decline in new cases for 14 days, not to mention the ability to do adequate contact tracing and perform adequate testing, things that are not yet in place in Georgia.
But Kemp argues the state is prepared.
“We’re probably gonna see our cases continue to go up, but we’re a lot better prepared for that now than we were over a month ago,” he said. “We have the hospital bed capacity, we have the community knowledge, we have a lot of things in place now.”
So why is Kemp making this decision now, if we still need more testing and more days of falling cases?
Kemp said Monday that he was considering economic health as well as physical health in making his decisions.
“I don’t give a damn about politics now,” Kemp said. “We’re talking about somebody that has put their whole life into building a business that has people that they love and work with every single day working in many of these places that are at home, going broke worried about whether they can feed their children make the mortgage payment.”
Georgia’s Department of Labor has processed unemployment claims for nearly 10% of the state’s workforce, but the coronavirus has ravaged long-term senior facilities, spread like wildfire through southwest Georgia and claimed the lives of at least 775 people.
"These are tough moments in our state and our nation, I hear the concerns of those that I'm honored to serve," he said. "I see the terrible impact of COVID-19 on public health, as well as the pocketbook."
Macon-Bibb’s curve: a case study
Around the state, health officials are still bracing for the worst of the virus.
“We expect our surge to be some time now in mid-May,” Medical Center, Navicent Health, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Patrice Walker told the Macon-Bibb County Board of Health during a teleconference meeting Monday morning.
At 132 infections for every 100,000 residents, Bibb County cracked the top twenty list of Georgia counties for per capita infections. Bibb County, like the rest of the top counties for per capita infections, is also majority African American.
Due to a number of issues, Bibb County’s reporting of positive test results have been taking up to about 10 days, Dr. Renee Haynes said.
Last week, Kemp’s office raised concerns with local Macon-Bibb County leaders about the testing lag.
Macon-Bibb Commissioner Elaine Lucas has repeatedly questioned whether local factories and industries are doing enough social distancing to curtail spread.
Board members gave voice to fears the community might be a “powder keg” ready to blow.
“I just feel like… we’re not seeing the numbers yet and so it’s just scaring me to death,” said Lucas, who sits on the board of health.
Mayors react
One group not exactly pleased with Kemp’s announcement are some Georgia mayors.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is creating a task force to help guide when the city can reopen, and said she was concerned by the state’s order.
“I still have my voice that I can use, and what I’ll continue to ask Atlantans is to please stay at home,” she said on ABC News. “We don’t know what the governor is looking at, but what I do know is we have nearly 19,000 people who have tested positive as of this evening.”
Tybee Island Mayor Shirley Sessions said even with restrictions eased, people and businesses may not be ready to go back to normal.
“Obviously, it’s gonna be interesting to see how the public responds to going back into public spaces,” she said. “That’s gonna be the bottom line.”
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