Georgia’s governor threw a wrench to get people to put masks on COVID-19 by banning more than a dozen local governments in his state from ordering them to be used in public.
Governor Brian Kemp issued his executive order Wednesday, the same day that another state Republican Governor who has seen a surge in new cases, Mike DeWine of Ohio, changed course and urged residents to wear masks at all times. when they are outside.
Kemp spokeswoman Candice Broce insisted in a tweet that the governor was not against wearing masks.
“Previous executive orders, and now this order, state that no local action can be more or less restrictive than ours,” Broce wrote. “We have explained that local mask mandates cannot be enforced. The Governor continues to encourage Georgians to wear masks in public. “
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat touted as one of Joe Biden’s possible vice presidential elections, quickly rejected Kemp’s ban.
“The Mayor’s Order remains in place, as science and data will continue to drive the City’s decisions,” Bottoms spokesman Michael Smith said. “Masks save lives”.
In Georgia, 3,871 new cases of COVID-19 were reported on Wednesday, the second-highest daily total since the pandemic began, according to the latest NBC News count. Overall, Georgia has reported 127,834 cases and recorded 3,091 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Kemp’s move came as more and more Republicans who had previously been reluctant to wear masks were changing their tone, and the number of new cases was increasing at an astonishing rate, especially among children, as Florida officials now report.
Even President Donald Trump, an ally of Kemp, was seen over the weekend wearing a mask for the first time at a public event.
Most medical experts agree that wearing masks, along with social distancing, are effective ways to stop the spread of COVID-19, a deadly virus that, as of Thursday morning, has claimed 138,382 lives in USA, With 3,522,672 cases reported, according to the latest NBC News figures show.
Considering those staggering sums, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, Kroger, the nation’s largest supermarket chain, and Target, announced Wednesday that they will require customers to put a mask or face covering inside stores.
In doing so, these companies joined the ranks of giant retailers like Best Buy, Costco, and Apple, which had already required skins.
But enforcing those rules has at times sparked clashes, some even deadly, with clients who claim their rights are being restricted and others who simply refuse to use them.
In Utah, which has also seen a rapid increase in new cases of coronavirus, parents who opposed a new requirement that children wear masks filled out a Utah county commission meeting and disobeyed social distancing rules by remove the tape from the seats that were not supposed to be used.
Many wore “Trump 2020” hats and almost none wore a mask.
Meanwhile, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which hosted a Trump rally last month, after some campaign employees and notable Republican aides like state governor Kevin Stitt became infected, they approved a mandate requiring people to wear masks. in public.
Nationally, the majority of victims until recently were seniors. But experts blame young people who crowd into recently reopened bars and restaurants, and fail to socialize or wear masks, for the staggering increase in COVID-19 cases across the country.
In Florida, nearly a third of children tested for coronavirus have been positive, according to local media reports.
And Dr. Alina Alonso, director of the Palm Beach County health department, warned that there could be long-term effects on the health of children who get the virus now.
“They are seeing that there is lung damage in these asymptomatic children,” Alonso told county commissioners. “We don’t know how that will manifest itself in a year or two years. Is that child going to have chronic lung problems or not?
Alonso’s warning seemed to be at odds with the message that Governor Ron DeSantis has been emphasizing by pushing for the school to reopen in September. DeSantis, the father of three young children, has insisted that he would send his children to school if they were old enough to attend.
Florida, where the Republican convention is scheduled to be held next month, approved a lousy benchmark on Wednesday with more than 300,000 cases of COVID-19 reported since the start of the pandemic. Numerous hospitals across the state also reported that they were rapidly running out of ICU beds for infected patients.
