Atlanta’s mayor reached out to her city in hopes that people will really take her stay-at-home order seriously.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms held a town hall forum on Facebook Live Monday morning, during which she made it clear that there is no timeline to lift her stay-at-home order.
One of the main reasons is because she doesn't want to overwhelm Atlanta’s health care system.
“In addition to what we already face, add to that the coronavirus and it is extremely challenging to our health care system,” Bottoms said. “We know that they are not testing those who are asymptomatic and that they are not testing those with mild symptoms so that we can preserve the limited number of tests that we have. So we can assume that numbers are much, much, much higher than is being reflected.”
The mayor addressed the issue so many other major cities have had to deal with: a high-density population, creating a virtual breeding ground for the spread of coronavirus.
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“It's what you're seeing in New York and Seattle. It's what we're attempting to avoid here in Atlanta,” Bottoms said.
The mayor emphasized the importance of staying home, especially with a health care system that is already stretched.
“When you think of a hospital like Grady Memorial -- that hospital, on any given da,y is almost full with people doesn’t stop because of a pandemic,” Bottoms said.
The Department of Public Health said an order of 1,200 additional ventilators should arrive in Georgia sometime in April.
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