Chautauqua County appears to be in line for more than $83 million in the COVID-19 relief bill that is being debated in Washington.

On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins of Buffalo — who represented Chautauqua County 2006 until 2012, noted the city of Jamestown was in line to receive $28 million, with the city of Dunkirk was in line to receive $11 million. County government, based in Mayville, was expected to receive $25 million.

“The role of Congress and the federal government in times of national emergency is to marshal its resources to ensure that states and localities have the resources to respond on the ground,” the Democrat from Buffalo said. “Whether it’s a snowstorm, a blizzard, a flooding, a hurricane or forest fires, the federal government’s role in times of national emergency is to do one thing, protect its people. But this response did not work for the first 11 months. This plan … will deal with the disease and also deal with the economic damage that has been done to this economy. We should move and we should move fast.”

Other county municipalities seeing significant funding include: the town of Pomfret, $2.6 million; village of Fredonia, $1.9 million; town of Ellicott, $1.5 million; town of Busti, $1.3 million; town of Hanover, $1.2 million; town of Westfield, $849,986; town of Ellery, $801,758; town of Chautauqua, $786,421; town of Carroll, $619,011.

All other municipalities were targeted to receive between $555,447 in the village of Westfield to $83,151 in the village of Panama.

U.S. Rep. Tom Reed also expressed his enthusiasm for the municipal assistance in the relief package. “I am glad to see the state and local aid in this proposal,” he said. “I’m comfortable with the numbers as they are going to debated.”

Chautauqua County also heard more positive numbers regarding the virus on Thursday. COVID hospitalizations, active cases and seven-day positivity rate all fell in numbers released by the Health Department.

There were 32 new COVID cases, along with one new death related to the virus. To date, there have been 7,170 total confirmed cases and 129 fatalities. However, the number of active cases have dropped, from 239 reported Wednesday to 233; in addition the number of people in the hospital with COVID also dipped, from 29 to 27.

And the positivity rate, the number of positive cases compared to the total number of tests administered, went from 4.8% to 4.4% in the county.

In Cattaraugus County, 28 new COVID cases were reported Wednesday evening. There are currently 306 active cases, 22 people with the virus in the hospital and a seven-day positivity rate of 5%.

To date, there have been 4,022 confirmed cases in Cattaraugus County as well as 82 virus-related deaths and 3,642 recoveries.

In nearby Warren County, there were three new cases of COVID-19 and no new virus-related deaths announced on Thursday. According to information on the Pennsylvania Department of Health COVID-19 Dashboard, there have been 2,089 total cases, 1,717 confirmed and 372 probables. About 5.3% of the county population has or has had the virus.

There have been 95 deaths of county residents attributed to the virus. That is a rate of about 0.24% or 2.4 deaths per 1,000 population.

Eric Tichy and Brian Ferry contributed to this report.