Atlanta mayor opening up COVID-19 testing center for city workers

ATLANTA — Concerned about rising COVID-19 cases, Atlanta's mayor said Wednesday she is opening up a new testing center just for city workers, so they can get back to servicing the city.

Channel 2′s Dave Huddleston learned that the new testing center will be right across from Atlanta City Hall at their wellness center.

"It gives them an opportunity to have a designated place for them to go get testing," Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said.

City hall is closed but about half of the city's 9,000 employees are considered essential workers, so they are still on the job and the center is centrally located.

[RELATED: Special section on coronavirus in Georgia]

“We’ve dedicated up to $7.7 million of our COVID relief funds to expand COVID-19 testing,” Mayor Bottoms said. “As many of you know, Georgia has been identified as a Red Zone.”

That means if 100,000 people are tested for COVID, 10% of those people tested positive. If you drill down even more, the numbers get worse for Atlanta.

A recent spike in Fulton and DeKalb counties show a third of the positive cases are Atlanta residents.

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“The city of Atlanta, as far as we know, as an organization, we have had a total of 289 people that have tested positive. We are aware of 172 current cases and we have had two deaths from COVID-19,” Bottoms said.

Bottoms told Huddleston that she's using close to $8 million to slow the spread of the coronavirus and plans to ask the feds for even more.

"Last week, I joined 69 mayors across Georgia, in sending a letter to Sens. Perdue and Loeffler asking them to include direct funding to cities in the next stimulus bill," Bottoms said.

Bottoms said because of the high number of cases in the city, she plans on keeping her kids at home for the beginning of the new school year.

“I’ve chosen not to send my children back,” Bottoms said. “Nobody is happy about that in my house.”

Bottoms told Huddleston that not only parents, but teachers and staff should be given an option to return to school.

"Asymptomatic carriers can often times be children, and on top of that you have cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers, teachers," Bottom said.

The mayor said she says she supports Atlanta Public Schools delaying the school start date for 9 weeks, especially after she and her family came down with the virus.

Bottoms told Huddleston that everyone in her household appears to be fine now, but her husband has had some lingering effects from the virus.

"He wakes up with a migraine headache," Bottoms said. "The fatigue is still there. It hits him at unexpected times."

Bottoms said the new testing center for city workers opens Thursday.

Metro Atlanta man stuck in hospital since March battling COVID-19 Channel 2's Tom Jones spoke with the man, who wants to warn others about how serious his battle has been.

Cox Media Group