Most Fulton County Students Required To Mask In Georgia

Fulton’s action means more than 38% of Georgia’s public school students are covered by a mask mandate, according to a count kept by The Associated Press. Besides the parts of Fulton covered, that includes all of 27 other districts.

Schools in Echols County delayed their start from Friday to Aug. 16 because of COVID-19 exposures among employees, becoming at least the fourth Georgia district to delay their start, along with Early, Evans and Wheeler counties.

Georgia recorded nearly 5,000 positive COVID-19 tests Thursday, pushing its seven-day average above 4,300. The last time the seven-day average was that high was in early February. The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients rose to nearly 3,000, a six-fold increase over a month ago.

“As soon as a patient is discharged from our critical care unit, or worse, is deceased, there’s another patient to put in that bed,” Jan Jones, director of Southeast Georgia Health System patient care services, told The Brunswick News. “It’s like a revolving door that we can’t stop.”

The Statesboro Herald reported that more patients with COVID-19 were hospitalized at East Georgia Regional Medical Center in Statesboro on Wednesday than any other single day since the pandemic began in March 2020.

Almost 15% of molecular tests for COVID-19 are coming back positive, three times the rate that experts say indicates most cases are being detected. Though deaths have remained lower than at the worst points of the pandemic, thanks in part to higher vaccination rates among older people, 35 new deaths were reported Wednesday, the most in more than six weeks. Nearly 22,000 people in Georgia have died from COVID-19.

Others are changing their plans because of rising COVID-19 cases.

Georgia Chief Justice David Nahmias announced state Supreme Court hearings this month would be conducted online, and urged other state judges to conduct remote hearings “when it is lawful, effective, and safer.” He said certain hearings and jury trials should continue in-person for now with appropriate protections. Georgia courts face a huge backlog of jury trials because in-person trials were on hold for months.

The middle Georgia city of Perry canceled all city-sponsored events for the rest of August, citing concerns about high hospitalization rates in Houston County.

But the rise of mask mandates is sparking opposition from some Republicans who want to ban them.

State Sen. Burt Jones, a possible Republican candidate for lieutenant governor next year, wrote to Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday urging a special legislative session to ban schools from requiring masks, arguing young students struggle when students and teachers are masked and that COVID-19 isn’t a particularly severe threat to student health.

“There is perhaps no more pressing issue before our state,” Jones, of Jackson, wrote. “The wellbeing of our children — and their short and long-term development and education — are squarely at risk by requiring them to wear a mask for the upcoming school year.”

The Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the American Association of Pediatrics advises that everyone in schools should wear face coverings, no matter their vaccination status.

“This notion that it’s really OK for kids to get COVID is really a bad notion,” Dr. Tina Tan, a pediatrician who specializes in infectious diseases at Northwestern University, told reporters last month.

The Republican Kemp has never imposed a mask mandate for all public places or schools. Kemp still opposes a statewide rule, but he’s leaving it up to local superintendents to decide.

“I trust the local school systems with local control,” Kemp told reporters last week.

A majority of Georgia’s 1.7 million public school students were covered by mask mandates last year, although many suburban and rural districts didn’t require face coverings.