Mayor Brian Treece spoke candidly about a proposed ordinance the Columbia City Council will consider Monday that would require people to wear face masks in public and private settings where they are in contact with people who are not members of their households.
Treece began the news conference Thursday with some grim statistics about the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in Boone County. He noted that the first 100 cases in the county took 55 days to accumulate. The next 100 took 26 days. The third one hundred, just 14 days.
On Thursday afternoon, the Columbia/Boone County Department of Health and Human Services announced 39 new COVID-19 cases, the highest one-day total of the pandemic thus far.
“Our contact tracing efforts have quickly become overwhelmed and positivity rates continue to climb,” Health Director Stephanie Browning said in a news release. “We are working closely with our city and county partners to implement additional mitigation measures in order to avoid returning to more strict regulations.”
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