Coffee County Commission receives COVID-19 update

The Coffee County Commission met on May 11 and heard from Coffee County EMA Director James Brown as he updated the commission on where it stands in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brown said that as of May 11, Coffee County has 153 confirmed cases of COVID-19 out of more than 1,000 conducted tests. Brown emphasized that currently only 14 percent of conducted tests in the county have come back positive.

Also, Brown said that Coffee County has just 56 active cases of COVID-19, while 97 have moved off quarantine and recovered from the illness. He did, however, acknowledge that 40 tests were conducted last week alone as the Coffee County Health Department now conducts free tests twice a week. Brown said that we could see more positive cases simply because of the sheer number of new tests being conducted, but pointed out that the county is currently averaging just four positive cases per day and has no deaths related to COVID-19 thus far.

Brown also said that nursing homes in the county would be receiving a new shipment of personal protective equipment (PPE) this month and another in June from FEMA.

FEMA has also set up a new FDA-approved facility in Birmingham to decontaminate N95 protective face masks.

“You might say, ‘well, how does that help us,’ but it really does,” Brown said. “They are arranging for us to be able to ship our N95 masks from here to Birmingham and have them cleaned and sent back to us.

“With the system they have it can clean an N95 mask up to 20 times and that should really help us out with our number of masks.”

Coffee County Commissioner Josh Carnely said that he hoped the commission would get a chance to acknowledge all of the work that Brown and Coffee County EMA has put in once this pandemic is over. Carnely said in a meeting last week with first responders it was made clear how great of a job Coffee County EMA has been doing.

“Some of the people in that meeting were bragging on Coffee County and our EMA and what a good job they’ve done with distributing the PPE,” Carnley said. “I think we really need to acknowledge James and a lot of those people (in Coffee County EMA) that have been instrumental. We rely on those guys and they really do a good job.”

Brown also said that after a preliminary damage assessment from the severe weather outbreak in April, Coffee County saw more than $400,000 worth of damage. He said that South Alabama Electric claimed to have suffered more damage than they had during Hurricane Opal in the 1990s.

In other business, the commission approved a bid from the Brooklyn Limestone Quarry in Brooklyn to provide lime rock for the use in the county.