To get an idea of how much federal and state relief money is flowing into Guilford County to help address the coronavirus pandemic, one only has to take a quick glance at the agenda for the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Thursday, Aug. 19 meeting. 

The Board of Commissioners has to vote to accept grant money – yes, they always vote to approve – and, in addition to other help for COVID-19 that the county will see Thursday night, there are four rich funding initiatives for the Guilford County Department of Public Health.

One pot of money is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 Vaccination Program.  The county’s health department will get $814,665 to continue vaccination efforts.

Officially, that item reads “Approve an increase of $814,655 in Federal/State Revenues and increase the FY2021-22 Department of Health and Human Services – Public Health division budget by the same amount to reflect revenues awarded from the NC Division of Public Health, Women’s and Children’s Health Section/ Immunization Branch for COVID-19 vaccination activities.”

Guilford County Health Director Dr. Iulia Vann will be the county’s point person in charge of seeing that the funds are well spent.

Here are some other grants the county’s health department will see approved on August 19.

  • A $174,828 appropriation of federal and state funds received through the North Carolina Department of Public Health’s Epidemiology/Preparedness and Response Branch “for emergency response to COVID-19.”
  • $4,119,809 in federal and state money to support activities outlined in the federal Paycheck Protection Program and the Health Care Enhancement Act of 2020.
  • $103,968 in federal and state money for various initiatives that are part of the CARES Act of 2020.

In April of 2020, Guilford County commissioners and county staff were ringing their hands wondering how the county’s government could possibly endure a massive shutdown of economic activity across the county.  But the answer to that question turned out to be that they would end up coming out pretty well indeed – thanks to extraordinary financial help from the state and from the federal government.