Fulton County officials have reinstituted a mask mandate for visitors and employees inside all government buildings, as COVID-19 spread has dramatically increased in recent weeks across metro Atlanta and the nation.
Fulton joins the city of Atlanta, which in late July took the mandate one step further when Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms ordered that masks be worn at all indoor public spaces, including inside private businesses.
And since the vast majority of Fulton residents live in the county’s 15 municipalities, it matters what the cities do.
East Point this week joined Savannah, Atlanta and Athens-Clarke County by requiring indoor mask-wearing across their jurisdictions. The Southside city of 35,000 residents in July 2020 became the first in Fulton to require masks in situations where people who don’t live together can come into contact.
“Of course this is not really about penalizing people, (instead) really trying to incentivize them to do the right thing,” Mayor Deana Holiday Ingraham said Monday, adding that the requirement is needed because the Delta variant of the virus is spreading.
Fulton board of health director Dr. Lynn Paxton called the surge “unprecedented” on Wednesday.
In May, she said, the Delta variant accounted for 1% of cases. Now? It’s about 80%, Paxton said, adding that some studies show the strain is five to 10 times more virulent.
Though 515,534 people had been fully vaccinated in Fulton as of Monday, she said, people are still worried about breakthrough cases — even though the statistics show the risk is still low.
Of the 4.1 million fully vaccinated people in Georgia between Jan. 19 and July 27, she said 4,908 (or 0.12%) have tested positive. She said there’ve been 118 hospitalizations and 24 deaths.
Doug Schuster, with emergency management firm Emergency Management Services International (EMSI), told commissioners Wednesday that hospitalizations are up 446 percent (or 290 people) over the last three weeks. The test-positive rate has gone up 495 percent in that time.
He said there were 640 cases in the county on Tuesday alone, which is the highest single-day total since Jan. 15.
“The lines on the charts are almost going straight up,” Schuster said.
As a result, quality of life will suffer: Fulton’s senior centers will pause their reopening; libraries (even with county public school set to begin Aug. 9) will limit study rooms to two people; and there will be no county-sponsored events unless they are relates to vaccines.
Fulton COO Anna Roach said the county is upping the incentives for employees to get vaccinated —$150 with random $500 gift cards also being given away. Employees who refuse to get vaccinated must be tested weekly.
Rough estimates show just over half of employees have gotten vaccinated. If 80 percent of county employees get the shots, all vaccinated staff members are eligible to win a $10,000 grand prize drawing, Roach said.
DeKalb and Cobb counties are taking different paths.
DeKalb hasn’t fully re-opened most of its buildings to the public, but employees are required to wear masks. The countywide mask mandate also remains in place.
Cobb has not instituted a mask mandate. As for its cities: Kennesaw and Smyrna did not discuss such a mandate at their Monday meetings, and Acworth was set to meet Thursday without a mandate on its agenda.
AJC reporters Matt Bruce, Tyler Estep and Tyler Wilkins contributed to this report.
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