Coronavirus (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
ATLANTA – A drug that has been shown to shorten the recovery time for some COVID-19 patients is now available at three hospitals operated by Piedmont Healthcare.
Piedmont is participating in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) expanded access program for the antiviral drug remdesivir, which was granted emergency use authorization May 1.
The drug is available to patients at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, Piedmont Fayette Hospital and at Piedmont Columbus Regional’s Midtown campus and may be expanded to other Piedmont hospitals.
FDA expanded access programs allow patients with immediately life-threatening conditions or a serious disease access to an investigational medical product outside of clinical trials when no comparable or alternative options are available.
“Piedmont’s providers have been on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Charles Brown, CEO of Piedmont Healthcare’s Physician Enterprise. “Remdesivir gives them another tool to help care for our patients.”
For Piedmont, this will represent the second chance to work with remdesivir.
“We had a positive experience with remdesivir early in the pandemic and are excited to be able to provide to our patients again,” said Dr. Amy Hajari Case, Piedmont’s medical director of pulmonary and critical care research and principal site director for the program at Piedmont Atlanta.
The Georgia Supreme Court meets in the Nathan Deal Judicial Center (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling Thursday denying a bid by two would-be candidates for a seat on the high court from landing a spot on the June 9 primary ballot.
Former U.S. Rep. John Barrow and former state Rep. Beth Beskin filed separate lawsuits in March after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, at the request of Gov. Brian Kemp, canceled an election to choose a successor to departing Justice Keith Blackwell.
Blackwell’s six-year term was due to expire at the end of this year. But he notified Kemp in February that he planned instead to resign effective Nov. 18.
Kemp then instructed Raffensperger to cancel the election and that the governor would be filling the seat by appointment.
The high court agreed, declaring in a 6-2 decision Thursday that under Georgia’s 1983 Constitution, a justice’s resignation – once accepted by the governor – is irrevocable.
“When an incumbent justice vacates his office before the end of his term, his existing term of office is eliminated, and the successor justice appointed by the governor serves a new, shortened term that is unrelated to the previous incumbent’s term,” Presiding Justice David Nahmias wrote in a 71-page majority opinion.
The Constitution goes on to provide that an appointee to an elective judicial office shall serve “until Jan. 1 of the year following the next general election which is more than six months after such person’s appointment.”
In this case, that means Blackwell’s successor will serve a term that begins Nov. 18 and runs through Jan. 1, 2023. To continue in office, he or she would have to seek re-election in 2022.
Two of the judges who stepped up to the Supreme Court to hear the case after some of the justices recused themselves dissented from Thursday’s ruling.
“We must reconcile two constitutional provisions,” Judge Brenda Holbert Trammell wrote in a 25-page dissent. “One guarantees the rights of the voters to determine the next justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. The other grants to the governor the right to fill vacancies in such office by appointment.
“[The] majority gives the greater weight to the provisions allowing appointment. Because I feel that this denies the people the right to elect their justice as provided by the Constitution, I cannot agree with the majority position.”
Despite Thursday’s ruling, Beskin is still on the June 9 primary ballot. She is challenging incumbent Justice Charlie Bethel, who is seeking his first full term on the high court after being appointed to the bench by then-Gov. Nathan Deal in 2018.
Georgia education officials got their first look Thursday at budget cuts ahead for public schools and programs amid coronavirus but did not dive into specifics on whether staff furloughs or layoffs may be needed.
The Georgia Department of Education is facing across-the-board cuts of around $1.6 billion to all aspects of the agency, from state administrative offices in Atlanta to specialty programs like agricultural education to everyday basic classroom education.
Those cuts come as part of 14% spending reductions that all state agencies must propose to state lawmakers by May 20, as business closures and social distancing spurred by coronavirus look to put state revenues in a $3 billion to $4 billion hole.
The blow to some educational programs will be softened since the agency was already gearing up for 6% budget reductions Gov. Brian Kemp ordered last summer for the fiscal 2021 budget, officials said Thursday at a State Board of Education meeting.
To manage those previous cuts, education officials imposed a hiring freeze starting last October, restricted travel, clamped down on approving new vendor contracts and halted in-person staff training and professional development, among other measures.
But the previous cuts did not include the nearly $11.7 billion in funding the agency proposed to dole out for local school districts based on the number of students they enroll. Those funds take up by far the largest chunk of the state’s education spending and pay for bottom-line classroom programs and teacher salaries.
State officials expect to get more detailed rundowns next week from local school districts on how they plan to absorb the cuts. All aspects of their budgets – from personnel costs to contracts to facility rents and more – will be evaluated, officials said Thursday.
“These are incredibly challenging times and everybody’s got a lot of very, very important work to do the best we can for students, administrators and teachers throughout the state of Georgia,” said board Chairman Scott Sweeney.
Jason Downey, also a board member, said he has fielded calls from people worried about extended furloughs and shortened school weeks. He urged the board to communicate clearly with the public as decisions are made in the coming weeks on how the cuts will affect local schools.
“This is like [the 2008 recession] and in many ways could be much worse,” Downey said. “We just need to be sure that everyone is well informed.”
ATLANTA – Nearly 243,000 Georgians filed initial unemployment claims last week, a slight increase over the 228,352 filed the previous week, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
That brings to more than 1.8 million the number of initial claims submitted to the agency since the middle of March, when the coronavirus pandemic began prompting Georgia businesses to shut down and lay off workers.
With some of those laid off employees now losing their jobs permanently, the labor department has developed a program that will allow employer-filed partial unemployment claims to be converted to individual claims. The Claims Conversion Program will begin next week.
“This program will allow employees who are permanently laid off the opportunity to instantly convert their claim to an individual one ensuring continued benefits without having to refile their claim,” Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said.
The new program will replace the past system that forced permanently laid off employees to file an individual unemployment claim, a process now taking more than 30 days.
The labor department has issued more than $2.4 billion in combined state and federal unemployment benefits during the last eight weeks. Of the 1,840,365 initial claims filed, 812,281 qualified to receive benefits and 575,000 Georgians received their first payment.
“That is more recipients than the past four years combined,” Butler said.
During the past eight weeks, the most initial unemployment claims – 493,600 – have come from the accommodation and food services sector. The health care and social assistance category is a distant second, with 221,519 claims, followed by retail trade with 211,032 claims.
ATLANTA – Consultants for an Alabama-based company planning a titanium mine near the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge defended the project Wednesday at a virtual public meeting sponsored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Twin Pines Minerals is seeking a permit from the federal agency to conduct a demonstration mining project on 1,042 acres along Trail Ridge in Charlton County, near the southeastern edge of the largest black water swamp in North America.
Environmental groups including the Georgia Conservancy and several riverkeeper organizations have raised concerns the mine could damage adjacent wetlands and permanently affect the hydrology of the entire 438,000-acre swamp.
The project’s opponents are asking the Corps to require an environmental impact statement as a condition for approving the permit.
Geologists with TTL Inc. of Tuscaloosa, Ala., addressed both the need for the project and steps the applicant will take to minimize the mine’s environmental impacts and restore the site after the mining is completed.
Chris Stanford, a TTL staff geologist, said titanium and zircon – another mineral to be mined at the site – have a variety of uses, including in medical equipment such as orthopedic implants, and in aircraft and nuclear reactors, due to their strength and light weight.
However, only a tiny percentage of the two minerals is produced domestically, forcing the U.S. to import the vast majority of the materials.
“These minerals are vital and are subject to supply-chain disruptions,” Stanford said.
Chris Terrell, an environmental scientist with TTL, downplayed the environmental damage the mine could do to the proposed site because the area already has been degraded by decades of commercial timber harvesting and a wildfire that occurred there in 2017.
“The effects of ongoing commercial practices and the wildfire can be seen throughout the site,” he said.
Nonetheless, Terrell said Twin Pines Minerals is working on a plan to offset the project’s impacts on rare plant and animal species and on local wetlands.
One state-protected plant species will be relocated, as will gopher tortoises whose burrows lie in the way of the project, Terrell said.
Wetlands impacts will be mitigated through the purchase of “mitigation credits,” which ensure that any losses to wetland caused by a development project are offset by preservation activities at another location so there is no net loss to the environment.
The applicant plans to mine the site for six years, moving south to north, at an average pace of 115 feet per day. The maximum depth of mining would be 50 feet.
The Army Corps of Engineers is accepting public comment on the project through May 28.
