Mask mandate will likely get extended until May, Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley says
Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley will look to extend the county’s mask mandate another three months at Tuesday’s commissioner’s court meeting.
The commissioners will first vote on extending the county’s declaration of local disaster until May 25, according to the meeting agenda. This gives Whitley the power to put the mask order in place until the same date.
“We need to stay the course with these masks until we can get a whole lot more people vaccinated,” Whitley said.
The judge said the county is seeing a downward trend in COVID-19. Dropping the mask mandate could prove detrimental, he said.
The county has been in a state of disaster since March 13, 2020, in response to the public health emergency as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The court must renew the declaration every three months and it has been unanimously renewed ever since.
Whitley first enacted the mask mandate on June 25, 2020, before Gov. Greg Abbott mandated a statewide face covering order. Abbott’s July 2 order requires people in counties with 20 or more confirmed COVID-19 cases to wear a face mask in buildings and businesses open to the public and outdoors where maintaining six feet of distance from another person isn’t feasible.
Tarrant County has reported 238,880 COVID-19 cases, including 2,789 deaths and an estimated 214,702 recoveries. The county reported Monday the fewest COVID-19 hospitalizations since November. COVID-19 patients occupy 14% of the total number of hospital beds and make up 17% of the 3,658 occupied beds. Both numbers have been trending downward since early January.
The positivity rate for the county was at 17% as of Friday, a drop from a pandemic-high of 30% on Jan. 7, according to county data.
