The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
STATE OF EMERGENCY
GEORGIA: Governor in crisis mode, calls for quick action.
Gov. Brian Kemp will declare a public health emergency in Georgia today and call for a special legislative session to help marshal the state’s response to a coronavirus outbreak that has sickened dozens of residents.
The declaration is the first of its kind ever issued in Georgia and will require lawmakers to return to the Capitol on Monday — days after they suspended the session indefinitely on Friday amid the growing pandemic.
Kemp said his actions “will greatly assist health and emergency management officials across Georgia by deploying all available resources for the mitigation and treatment of COVID-19,” the disease caused
by the coronavirus.
The declaration ratchets up the state’s response as the crisis sharply accelerates in Georgia. On Friday, health officials confirmed the number of Georgia cases of COVID-19 had climbed from 31 to 42. Cobb and Fulton counties each have eight cases. New cases have been reported in Bartow, Cherokee, Coweta, DeKalb, Fayette, Fulton and Gordon counties. That number changes daily. Go to www.ajc.com/coronavirus for the most up-to-date numbers.
Earlier this week, a 67-year-old patient at WellStar Kennestone Hospital became Georgia’s first patient to die from COVID-19.
Kemp’s announcement took place just after President Donald J. Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency. The president also asked every hospital nationwide to activate their emergency preparedness plans.
In Georgia, the emergency powers would allow Kemp to assume “direct operational control of all civil helpers in the state” and give him broad authority to perform “duties as may be deemed necessary to promote and secure the safety and protection” of residents.
They also would let him suspend regulations that would “prevent, hinder or delay necessary action” to cope with the outbreak, and give his office new powers to “commandeer or utilize” private property if it’s seen as essential.
In attempts to slow the spread of the disease, schools, churches, courthouses, concert halls and museums have been closing around the state, and many public events have been canceled or postponed, from college basketball’s Final Four tournament to the rest of the season at the Alliance Theatre.
The most sweeping of those measures sent thousands of schoolchildren home to continue learning online.
School districts, with little time to prepare for a pivot to online classes, struggled to prepare for an onslaught of new computer users. Parents, many of them also working remotely, found themselves juggling new challenges, as they combined their working days with the task of becoming classroom moderators.
Britainy Diaz, whose two boys were sent home from Gwinnett County’s Ivy Creek Elementary School, said she doesn’t have Wi-Fi at home and isn’t sure how her boys will access the internet to complete assignments.
Georgia also is dealing with quarantined passengers of the cruise ship Grand Princess.
Two more planeloads have arrived at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, bringing the number to 499, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Friday.
The passengers arriving in Georgia are asymptomatic, Dobbins officials said Thursday. “Prior to arriving here, the passengers were medically screened by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” officials said. “Quarantined individuals do not show symptoms of illness and are quarantined as a precaution.”
To accommodate and isolate those actually sickened by the virus and who have nowhere else to go, the state is building a “quarantine space” in a Middle Georgia county. Kemp’s office said Friday the facility is under construction at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Monroe County and that it will accommodate 20 temporary housing units when it’s complete. No patients are yet located there.
Metro Atlantans responded to the coronavirus emergency much the same way they react when snow falls in the city: by mobbing grocery stores. Customers queued up at supermarket cash registers in lines that reached into parking lots. They stripped shelves bare of meat, sanitizing products and — no surprise — toilet paper.
Food insecurity became a theme of the day’s events. Many children in Georgia eat free lunch and breakfast at school, and some were likely to go hungry without that dependable source. Atlanta Public Schools announced it would offer daily free meals at five sites while its buildings are closed. Students will be able to pick up bagged meals to go at Douglass High School, Cleveland Avenue Elementary School, Bunche Middle School, Sylvan Middle School and Phoenix Academy, which is located at Crim High School. The families of those students also will be able to pick up grocery items at the same locations.
Other communities were following suit. Gwinnett County Public Schools said it would offer meal pickup at 70 sites throughout the county and at bus stops near those sites for those without automobiles. The Salvation Army on Sugarloaf Parkway in Gwinnett planned to offer a drive-through Tuesdays and Thursdays for families that need food.
In attempts to slow the spread of the disease, schools, churches, courthouses, concert halls and museums have been closing around the state, and many public events have been canceled or postponed.