EMA gives update on PPE, federal assistance - Daily Tribune News

By JAMES SWIFT

Bartow County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) Director Dwayne Jamison led a pandemic task force conference call Monday afternoon, issuing several updates on the countywide response to the COVID-19 crisis.

At the time of the conference call, Jamison said Bartow had 121 confirmed cases with one Georgia Department of Public Health-reported fatality.

“We think that may be skewed a little bit because we’ve had several reports of possible fatalities related to COVID-19 over the weekend,” he said. “So there’s a lag in getting that report and getting that information back. So that number may go up as well.”

By Tuesday afternoon, the DPH indicated that Bartow’s confirmed COVID-19 caseload had increased to 129, with two deaths now reported.

“We’re seeing a slight increase daily from anywhere from one to 10 per day, which is better than what we had initially,” Jamison said. “Initially, we had a spike of incidents from the one incident, and now we’re just seeing a few of those come back.”

He said he expects to see the county’s confirmed caseload increase as testing capacity expands throughout the community.

He said the EMA received a phone call from the Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) on Friday concerning personal protective equipment (PPE) requests.

“We expect a call this week to be able to go down to Cobb County and pick up that PPE that was requested,” he said. “But they are, again, telling us ‘don’t expect everything that we’ve requested.’”

Jamison said the EMA has received several PPE donations from the private sector over the past week.

“Most of those went to law enforcement so far, because they had little to no personal protective equipment,” he said. “And we still have more people who are emailing us or calling us, wanting to donate PPE … I know we’ve had one or two personal care homes reach out, and as we get PPE, that we can share with them.”

He noted that the EMA can only accept new and unused PPE. Those who would like to make donations to the agency are advised to call (770) 387-5089.

The agency, he said, continues to work on long-term plans to address the coronavirus outbreak.

“We don’t know exactly how long this is going to last, not really sure exactly how many cases we’re going to end up with,” he said. “There’s a lot of predictions out there, you can go worst-case scenario or best-case scenario, our job is to plan for the worst-case scenario.”

In particular, he said the EMA is working alongside Cartersville Medical Center on plans to address potential overcrowding at the local hospital.

Recent emergency declarations, he continued, now open up the County government to State and federal assets.

“That also gives us the opportunity to apply for federal reimbursement from this disaster,” Jamison said. “Now keep in mind, the State has to meet a minimum threshold, and then the county, countywide — all the cities and the County combined — has to meet a threshold, which is close to $400,000.”

He reiterated that an “isolation transaction type-facility” has been set up to serve the region — i.e., a location for COVID-19-positive individuals to go who have nowhere else to self-quarantine. 

“If you have any of those people in your communities who need this facility, contact us here at the [emergency operations center] and we’ll be able to help facilitate that,” he said. “Obviously, the hospitals can request that directly.”

He concluded the teleconference by noting that the EMA is updating its point-of-distribution plans.

“So that we have more than just one or two facilities across the county for either testing or distribution of immunization shots, in the future,” he said. “Those are going to be, hopefully, kind of spread out around the county.” 

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