GA Coronavirus: $113 Million Targeted To Help Nursing Homes
ATLANTA, GA — Gov. Brian Kemp announced Friday that $113 million in federal coronavirus relief funds would be made available to Georgia nursing homes for increased staffing and COVID-19 response.
Nearly $80 million alone would be applied to testing nursing-home personnel.
This money augments more than $36 million of state money already spent for staff support to 115 skilled nursing facilities since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"My top priority from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to ensure the health and safety of our most vulnerable citizens," Kemp said.
As of Friday, 2,531 residents of Georgia’s nursing homes and assisted-care facilities have died because of the coronavirus. That’s more than a third of Georgia’s 7,106 deaths so far.
GEORGIA’S CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS FOR FRIDAY, OCT.2
Georgia Department of Public Health in Atlanta reported a total of 320,634 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2. According to the health department’s website, that includes 1,337 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.
Georgia also reported 7,106 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 45 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 28,791 hospitalizations — 123 more than the day before — and 5,337 admissions so far to intensive-care units.
No information is available from Georgia about how many patients have recovered.
Counties in or near metro Atlanta and other metropolitan areas continue to have the highest number of positives, with Fulton County still in the lead and DeKalb County surpassing 19,000 on Friday.
Fulton County: 27,855 cases — 65 new
Gwinnett County: 27,844 cases — 111 new
Cobb County: 19,872 cases — 43 new
DeKalb County: 19,030 cases — 92 new
Hall County: 9,567 cases — 69 new
Chatham County: 8,596 — 48 new
Richmond County: 7,220 — 40 new
Clayton County: 7,121 — 7 new
Cherokee County: 6,185 — 26 new
Bibb County: 6,115 — 18 new
Counties in or near metro Atlanta also continue to have the most deaths from COVID-19.
Fulton County: 579 deaths — 2 new
Cobb County: 429 deaths — 2 new
Gwinnett County: 412 deaths — 3 new
DeKalb County: 371 deaths — 2 new
Dougherty County: 187 deaths
Bibb County: 175 deaths — 2 new
Muscogee County: 170 deaths
Chatham County: 166 deaths
Richmond County: 166 deaths — 2 new
Clayton County: 162 deaths — 1 new
As of Friday, Georgia has administered more than 3.2 million COVID-19 tests, with about 9 percent of those tests the less reliable ones used to detect antibodies.
For the more reliable test for the virus itself, 10.1 percent of tests came back positive. For the less reliable test for antibodies, 8.4 percent came back positive. The overall positive rate was about 10 percent.
As more Georgians were tested over the last month, the percentage of positive tests inched upward from about 8 percent to more than 10 percent. However, over the last few weeks, the percentage of positives has stabilized at about 10 percent. According to the World Health Organization, positive test results should no more than 5 percent for two weeks before reopening for business as usual. Georgia largely reopened for business in April and May, and since then Gov. Brian Kemp has promoted the use of face masks but has steadfastly refused to mandate them.
All Georgia statistics are available on the state's COVID-19 website.
Globally, more than 34.4 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 1 million people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Friday.
In the United States, more than 7.3 million people have been infected and more than 208,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Friday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.
This article originally appeared on the Dallas-Hiram Patch
