A spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Health acknowledged the virus spread among “individuals who attended a number of events in Albany” but said it’s unclear “where or with whom it all started.”

‘It was like a domino effect’

Emell Murray discovered her long-time companion, Andrew J. Mitchell, unconscious in the living room of their home on February 24. The family said they suspect he had a heart attack and died.

After his passing, their siblings, nephews, nieces and friends traveled to Albany to pay their respects at his funeral service, and later spent the afternoon at Murray and Mitchell’s home.

A couple of days later, Murray, 75, was hospitalized. She had a fever and her blood pressure skyrocketed.

“We didn’t know what was wrong with her,” Alice Bell, Murray’s daughter, told CNN.

Murray spent much of March at the hospital. In between visits, doctors informed her she had tested positive for coronavirus.

But she wasn’t the only one.

“It was like a domino effect,” Bell said.

The Martin Luther King Memorial Chapel LLC, which hosted the respective funerals on February 29 and March 7, said health department officials notified them on March 13 about a potential exposure to the virus involving people who were present at the events.

The funeral home did not respond to CNN’s repeated attempts for comment.

The cluster of cases began emerging shortly after a 67-year-old man tested positive for the virus. The man traveled from Atlanta to attend one of the funerals and was hospitalized in Albany during his trip, said Steiner, the hospital system’s CEO.

“The next day it’s when we began seeing people coming to our emergency room who were sick,” Steiner said. “Two (people) the first day, six the next day, eight the next day, and it just began to cascade from that point.”

Some of those patients had attended the funerals, others were members of the same churches, Steiner said.

Life changed quickly in Albany

They enjoyed live music during a downtown festival and packed the local churches on Sundays.

As more people fell sick, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp told reporters that he was concerned about the growing number of cases in Albany.

The state sent its national guard to help

The epicenter of the pandemic for the coronavirus outbreak quickly changed from Washington to New York. As that happened, the virus’ impact also became evident in Georgia.

Health care workers at Phoebe Putney Health System went through six months’ worth of supplies in less than a week, Steiner said. Some health care workers are sleeping in their garages to protect their families and the intensive care units are quickly filling up.

Kemp deployed Georgia National Guard medical teams to Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, which has been the most inundated with patients. He’s also deploying more than 100 Guard troops to long-term care facilities throughout the state that have seen coronavirus cases.

He said Wednesday that Georgia hospitals might reach peak hospital capacity on April 23.

For CaMia Hopson, an Albany state representative who lost a friend to coronavirus, life in the region feels like it will never be the same.

“We weathered tornadoes, hurricanes, everything … but our entire world is dealing with something that we haven’t seen in our lifetime,” Hopson told CNN. “People are grieving, we are really hurting right now. We are not New York, but we are still impacted.”