Mayor Jonathan McCollar of Statesboro and Chairman Roy Thompson of the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners told reporters Tuesday that the recent local surge in COVID-19 cases was anticipated.
County Public Safety and Emergency Management Director Ted Wynn joined them for an 11 a.m. news conference hosted by McCollar at City Hall. The previous day, Bulloch County’s cumulative count of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus had surpassed 2,000, and Statesboro and Bulloch County appeared alarmingly near the top of national charts for the number of new cases.
Of the 2,003 cases in the county reported by the Georgia Department of Public Health, or DPH, since the first diagnosis in March, 598 appeared in the last two weeks. Those were Monday’s numbers. In Tuesday’s DPH report, 46 more cases boosted the cumulative total to 2,049. To date, among Bulloch County residents, COVID-19 has been the cause of 120 hospitalizations and 21 deaths.
“Yesterday, the New York Times ranked the city of Statesboro as the number-six city in the nation with the greatest number of new, relative-to-population, cases,” McCollar said. “In complete transparency, we want everyone to know that this spike is not coming as a surprise. This is something that we’ve been preparing for, for months.”
The New York Times ranking was actually of cities’ metropolitan or micropolitan statistical areas. Tuesday, the Times’ interactive online report showed the Statesboro micropolitan area as having the fifth-highest new COVID-19 case rate among city areas with more than 50,000 people nationwide.
Statesboro’s micropolitan area, as recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau, is geographically identical to Bulloch County and has the same population, 79,608, from a 2019 estimate. Bulloch’s 598 new cases in 14 days amounted to about 735 news cases per 100,000 people, as reported by the Georgia DPH.
Based on the same numbers, Bulloch County’s two-week rate of new cases ranked in the top 20 among U.S. counties.
‘A perfect storm’
“Our community is now currently in the crosshairs of what we believe is a perfect storm,” McCollar continued. “On August 17th both our public school system and our higher educational institutions, they all went back to convene their classes. As a result, we have seen an increased amount of socialization, which is normal for young people, and that has resulted in a tremendous increase in the numbers that we’re seeing infected.”
Georgia Southern University, Ogeechee Technical College and East Georgia State College all resumed in-person classes for the first time since March.
In the first two weeks of school, Georgia Southern saw 579 university-confirmed and self-reported cases among students and employees, including 548 cases on the Statesboro campus alone.
Last spring, three things happened that gave the city and county time to prepare to handle the situation, McCollar said: The university shifted to all online classes, the local school system ended its school year early, and the city by his emergency order “halted all high-touch businesses: pawn shops, beauty salons, massage therapists, and things of that nature.”
Gov. Brian Kemp’s statewide executive orders eventually limited what the city could do, and the city then worked “to build public support with local businesses and citizens in an effort to keep our community safe,” McCollar said.
City, county and university officials are now working with the Department of Public Health to expand testing capacity and scouting for new testing locations, McCollar reported.
“The message that we want to state clearly to our community is that this is an ‘all of us’ fight,” he said. “All of us have to come together to fight this common enemy.”
Through the volunteer group Squashing the Spread Bulloch, the city and county have distributed more than 50,000 face masks, or including Georgia Southern’s efforts on-campus, more than 70,000 masks throughout the community, the mayor reported.
Mask mandate …
Meanwhile Statesboro City Council enacted a mask mandate Aug. 18. This was permitted under an emergency order from the governor, who had previously opposed mask mandates.
In compliance with the guidelines established in Kemp’s order, Statesboro’s ordinance contains several exemptions. Businesses, which explicitly cannot be punished for customers’ actions, can prevent the mask requirement from being enforced on their property by putting up signs with specific wording to that effect.
“We don’t know how many businesses opted out,” McCollar said in answer to a journalist’s question. “What we can tell you is that we’re asking all businesses to opt in … and we’re hoping that we’re going to get a greater number after seeing where we are today, to understand the seriousness of the matter that we are facing.”
Results in no fines
As McCollar told reporters and the Statesboro Herald confirmed with Chief of Police Mike Broadhead, the city as of Tuesday still had not cited or fined anyone for violating the mask ordinance. Instead, police have been providing masks to people seen not wearing them in public spaces.
“What we’ve had law enforcement do is to go out and address crowds that are bigger than what they should be,” McCollar said. “But more than that, we’re actually passing out masks as well because we still want to continue to build a coalition through consensus. What we know is that we can be more effective if we’re getting people to opt into supporting measures that are going to keep us safe.”
County action?
Thompson said that the county commissioners would discuss a mask mandate when they met Tuesday evening. They had not previously adopted one.
Noting that he has an adult grandson with cystic fibrosis who has to take extra care not to be exposed, Thompson said he asked him to read an Association County Commissioners of Georgia model mask ordinance and tell him what he thought.
“He said, ‘Why do you even think about putting a mask mandate on the citizens because with all of the opt-outs, they give you the reasons that you don’t have to do it? It’s printed, right there in this bulletin,’” Thompson related.
While expressing doubt that the kind of mandate allowed by the state can be effective, he advocates wearing a mask as a way to take personal responsibility.
“If people would use common sense and wear a mask when out in public, we could control all of this increase in positive tests, I feel, if people would do it,” Thompson said. “You know, leadership is only as good as the people you’re trying to lead. If they will not comply with the orders at hand, then we have a serious problem.”
Better in 3 weeks?
He said he agreed with the mayor that the upsurge in cases “is nothing unexpected,” given the mass return of students. Thompson and Wynn both referred to remarks they had heard Monday from Georgia Southern University President Kyle Marrero.
“(Dr. Marrero) said hopefully in three weeks’ time you’d see a downward (trend) with positive tests,” Thompson said, “and that’s what we’re all looking forward to.”
During last spring’s shutdown, local officials said the goal was to protect East Georgia Regional Medical Center from being overwhelmed, especially with critical care patients. But many of those testing positive recently are younger people, who have lower rates of hospitalization from the illness.
“Currently, no, the health system is handling the load, but I think that’s what this is about,” Wynn said. “It’s about squashing that spread and making sure that it can continue to handle that load. …”
Staff at EGRMC were caring for 23 patients with the coronavirus, with five on ventilators Tuesday, Wynn stated in his COVID-19 update later in the day. To date, Bulloch County EMS has transported 103 patients with probable COVID-19 and 103 people with confirmed cases, and six of those were in a 24-hour period Monday and Tuesday.
“I think it’s important that we emphasize here this morning that people take personal accountability and do the things that they should, and I agree with Dr. Marrero from the university that probably in three to four weeks we’ll begin to see a downturn on these numbers, but it’s what we do in the next three to four weeks that’s critical,” Wynn added during the news conference.
Herald reporter Holli Deal Saxon also contributed to this report.