GAINESVILLE, GA (AP) – More than 100 National Guard personnel are deploying to 20 hospitals across the state to help them deal with the latest wave of COVID-19 cases in the state, announced on Tuesday the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp.
The 105 medically trained guards and women will help staff at hospitals in Atlanta, Macon, Savannah, Brunswick, Albany and other cities in the state, Kemp said in a statement.
“These guards will help our front-line health workers as they provide quality medical care during the current increase in cases and hospitalizations, and I am very grateful to General Carden and his team for their willingness to answer the call again in the our fight against COVID-19 “. Kemp said.
The Guard coordinates with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Community Health in the effort, Kemp said.
Meanwhile, two professors at the University of North Georgia have dropped concerns about classroom teaching during the state’s latest COVID-19 wave.
“I think that with COVID on the rise and we are being asked to teach our courses face to face with potentially unmasked and unvaccinated students who, in my case, I think they ask me to choose between my job and the health of myself and my family, ”Lorraine Buchbinder told The Times of Gainesville.
A Buchbinder colleague, Cornelia Lambert, resigned last week, she said. Both are history teachers.
Masks and vaccinations are “strongly encouraged, but not required,” school spokeswoman Sylvia Carson said.
Faculty members cannot require students to wear masks in their classrooms, he said. Masks may be required at certain campus locations, such as health centers and buses.
Carson said other teachers have filled both teachers and that “student instruction will not be interrupted.”
The university held the first day of classes on Monday. It is one of the largest public universities in the state, with about 20,000 students on five campuses.
In Georgia, where vaccination rates are well behind the national average, officials have opted for full approval of vaccines by the FDA as a way to convince some people to get vaccinated.
But for Northwest Georgia’s James Ford, Pfizer’s full approval Monday made no sense.
Ford had hesitated for months to get the puncture, but decided to get Johnson and Johnson last week, in part because he didn’t trust the new technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. He said these vaccines would need years of study to satisfy him.
“What they’ve done today is just noise,” Ford, 67, said of FDA approval. “That’s not something I put on my body.”