OKLAHOMA CITY – Gov. Kevin Stitt, joined with interim Health Commissioner Lance Frye, MD and Secretary of Science and Innovation Elizabeth Pollard, announced three new CARES Act grants to support efforts through the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stitt also announced his intent to file an executive order for OSDH to develop a color-coded alert system to notify citizens and local elected leaders of Oklahoma counties with growing levels of community spread, with additional public health recommendations associated with the color alerts.

“Tuesday’s spike will not be the last one we expect to see in the coming days. We asked Oklahomans to get tested before and after attending large scale events, and they have been active participants in our public health efforts by showing significant interest in our testing pods across the State,” said Frye. “As COVID-19 positive cases have increased, 40% of them have been adults in the 18 to 35 age range who typically don’t have symptoms. Younger adults need to be especially careful as potential carriers of COVID-19. We need all Oklahomans to work together to protect the lives of older and more vulnerable loved ones as families come together over the holiday weekend.”

The three CARES Act grants are:

COVID-19 Testing and Monitoring Grant – $50 million

Roughly $35 million will go towards expanding the public’s access to testing and expand public health labs ability to more rapidly deliver results. At this funding level, OSDH will be able to independently sustain the State’s current testing goal of testing 100,000 individuals a month. The remaining $15 million will allow OSDH to digitize and modernize data entry systems in the State health department and across county offices. It will also support OSDH’s efforts to make contact tracing services more efficient.

Mobile Health Units – $4.2 million

The funding will purchase 9 trailers and 18 vans that are retrofitted to deliver core public health services, to include GPS and Wifi to be connected into TeleHealth systems to advance the delivery of quality health care in rural parts of the state.

Long Term Care Facilities and Nursing Home Grants – $35 million

To compliment the Stitt re-opening plan of long-term care facilities and nursing homes, $35 million will go towards helping each facility increase infectious disease protocols as well as provide financial support for the purchasing of PPE, additional cleaning supplies, and telehealth medicine.

Each facility will be eligible for up to $15,000 specifically for contracting or employing a trained infection preventionist.