Hamilton County Covid-19 money

Tennessee is handing out more grants to pay for Covid-19 issues..

Sen.

Gardenhire explains it will provide more contact tracers.

Hamilton county will receive more grant money from the state to battle the spread of the coronavirus.

The announcement was made today by senator gardenhire.

News 12's winston reed met with him today to see how the funding will be used.

Hamilton county's covid-19 response efforts just received an added financial boost.

State senator todd gardenhire announced that the county will receive a 5.6 million dollar epidemiology and laboratory capacity detection grant.

The funding will then be directly turned over to the health department.

"it can be used for testing and tracing."

Senator gardenhire says the state is short on contact tracers.

With greater financial access, more jobs are expected to be open in the near future.

"it just takes time to have somebody pick up the phone and call somebody and trace those people people down.

You have to hire those people to do it, and it's a very expensive process."

Gardenhire believes this grant will save taxpayers money plus help develop more accurate data related to covid-19.

"we can really pinpoint where we need to do the testing and who do we need to do the testing with."

Standup: news 12 asked senator gardenhire if a portino of this money will go towards preventative measures like a vaccine but gardenhire says developing a successful vaccines is still in its early stages.

"vaccines are probably six to nine months off to do it.

This money can only be used for the current testing and tracing part of it with the county.

They're just overloaded right now."

Hamilton county will also receive over 300 thousand in a labaoratory testing support grant.

Reporting in hamilton county winston reed, news 12 now.