Cobb County to require masks in public facilities beginning Friday

Masks will be required in all Cobb County government facilities beginning Friday, County Manager Jackie McMorris said in a Tuesday meeting with members of the Cobb Legislative Delegation.

The mandate will be enforced on anyone who enters public facilities, including contractors, vendors, employees and visitors who can't physically distance, McMorris said.

"We know we're going to get a whole lot of push back, but at the end of the day, we see a lot of cases internally with our employees," she said, adding that she "only has control over our county facilities and our employee base."

The mask mandate doesn’t apply to outdoor county facilities, such as parks and amphitheaters, McMorris said in a county-produced video.

“In spaces where you can’t socially distance, or common areas to include break rooms, elevators or lobbies, small conference rooms, we’re going to ask you to mask up again,” McMorris said in the video.

McMorris added that the county’s temperature scanners, still in place in county buildings, can be used for anyone who thinks they may be running a fever before entering. Scanning oneself is not required, however.

The county previously had a mask mandate for county buildings, which McMorris ended in May, when the pandemic seemed to be in its final stages.

Cobb & Douglas Public Health Director Dr. Janet Memark said COVID-related hospitalizations in Cobb are up by 800% from June, before the current surge began.

"What I'm seeing is that these numbers are not coming down," Memark said, adding that hospitals are also "critically low" in space for the most critical patients.

As of Monday night, Cobb has reached 649 cases per 100,000 residents, Memark said, a mark nearly 6.5 times higher than what's considered an area of high community transmission.

Deaths in the state have also increased by 150% in the last two weeks, she said.

"This is as high as we've seen since January of 2021, which is the last big, big surge that we've had," she said.

Georgia passed the 1 million case threshold Tuesday, according to Georgia Department of Public Health data. Georgia's population is roughly 10.7 million people, according to recently released 2020 census data.

The seven-day average PCR test positive rate was 17.2% Tuesday. The positivity rate peaked at an average of 19.9% in January.

In Cobb, six deaths were reported Tuesday, the highest single-day death toll since March 3. Cobb is averaging more than 400 infections per day, a dramatic turnaround from June, when it consistently averaged fewer than 50 cases per day.

Here's a look at Cobb County and state coronavirus numbers reported Tuesday, and how they compare to the day before. All information comes from the Georgia DPH.

A Cobb-Douglas Public Health report, including data on how the coronavirus is affecting different ZIP codes, genders and ages, is available at reports.mysidewalk.com/17554e75c1#c-452027.

For the Georgia DPH’s full report, visit dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report.

National data can be found at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website at cdc.gov.