A look at major COVID-19 developments over the past week - Atlanta Journal Constitution

Jennifer Dalton, a career government lawyer who became chief legal officer for the Georgia Department of Public Health in the midst of the pandemic, says she also rankled her bosses by giving The Atlanta Journal-Constitution more than 15,000 pages of emails between public health Commissioner Kathleen Toomey and Gov.

The AJC reported that Kemp had repeatedly disregarded advice from public health experts, that the governor’s office had largely dictated public messaging about the coronavirus, and that the state withheld information showing the pandemic was worsening as Kemp relaxed safety measures.

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com.

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com.

Dalton spent 23 years in the state attorney general’s office before joining the Department of Public Health last October.

Dalton said she was asked to redact them, which would have violated state law.

During the same period, the Masseys’ son — Lewis Massey, who was Georgia’s secretary of state from 1996 to 1999 — was lobbying the health agency to award a contract for a call center for scheduling vaccinations to one of his clients, Maximus Inc.

Dalton says she told other officials that public health districts across the state already had their own vaccination scheduling systems.

Nancy Nydam, a spokeswoman for Toomey, said the health agency does not comment “on matters of potential, pending or post litigation.”.

When the AJC published its story in March based on the emails, a spokesman for Kemp disputed some of the story’s conclusions and said many other states “fared no better against COVID-19 than Georgia did.”.

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com