It has been twenty days now since Governor Ralph Northam declared an emergency to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Since that time, local and state government has mobilized to both deal with a coming wave of hospitalizations as well as the economic fallout of shutting down most of the economy. Today's show has important material from Charlottesville's public information program Cville360, including information about COVID-19 testing in our region. We also drop in on the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority's telephone meeting yesterday where they adopted a resolution to retool the city's existing grant programs for relief and resiiliency efforts.
Quotes:
"The only people who really need to be tested or those who are symptomatic. So people who are experiencing shortness of breath, fever, uh, the different symptoms of COVID 19 and they have some sort of level of exposure. Once someone is tested, the health department does a thorough investigation. So if they become positive, we will conduct this investigation again to see where they were in the last 14 days, who they made have had contact with. And then we will reach out to all of those individuals to make sure that they know that they may have been exposed and to ensure that they can get testing very quickly if they're showing symptoms or to give them the proper guidance on potentially quarantine for 14 days.” - Kathryn Goodman, March 31, 2020
“The prism through which we are looking at every issue now is through a public health and public safety prism." - Charlottesville Fire Chief Andrew Baxter, March 31, 2020
"It's critically important even as we take steps to flatten the curve that we do all we can to protect our public safety and health care personnel so that they can continue to work with people who are gravely ill over the next six or seven months." - Kaki Dimock, Charlottesville's Human Services Director, March 31, 2020
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