Southern politics are playing a role in Georgia's Athens-area coronavirus response, as hospital-short rural areas might potentially flood urban healthcare systems beyond capacity, Politico reported.
Rural hospitals have closed down over the years, forcing COVID-19 patients into the hospitals in cities like St. Mary's and Piedmont Athens Regional.
"It's not just adding beds," St. Mary's Hospital CEO Montez Carter told Politico. "It's the staff, equipment, physicians, the infrastructure needed to handle that surge.
"As we look at an Athens surge, we have to look at 15, 16, 17 counties that are being served by our facilities," Carter added, leaving some uncertainty on being able to serve their residents in addition to the neighbors. "There is no consensus where it will turn."
Hospitals in Athens-Clarke County, population 126,000, now serve more than 650,000 neighboring residents, per the report.
"If you add a pandemic, health systems serving these communities are exponentially more strained," University of Georgia professor Grace Bagwell Adams, director of the Athens Wellbeing Project, told Politico.
"There will be a two- to three-week lag time in the shelter-in-place policies paying off," Adams added. "Counties that Athens-Clarke County hospitals serve did not have shelter-in-place policies, yet their residents will come here to be cared for when they get very sick."
Politics and the disparate vulnerability to COVID-19 of African-American communities in the south add to the strain. The hard-hit urban areas are in near-full lock downs, while less-infected rural areas are more apt to continue as business as usual, contributing to the spread. It makes those in the urban areas more resentful of their "laissez-faire neighbors," officials say.
"We can do everything right, and suffer because of lack of responsibility of others," Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Russell Edwards told Politico.
"We had businesses advertise 'Come to [nearby county] Oconee, we're still open for business,'" he added. "They depend on Athens for customers, but they seemed to be profiteering. It was opportunistic."
National Guard medic, Dr. Brett Atchley, M.D., now deployed to the area, shares the concern of the local officials.
"When you think about all the counties depending on our hospital, and how wide the catchment area is, you realize we share what happens in every community we serve," Dr. Atchley told Politico. "If something happens there, we will share in that catastrophe with them, even if Athens itself stays somehow protected."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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