As Florida posted a state record of 276 COVID-19 deaths in one day, Tuesday, the Marion County Sheriff banned the mask from his department the same day, preventing his employees and visitors from wearing the face cover.
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The Washington post reported that Sheriff Billy Woods only allows his officers to wear masks in certain locations, including hospitals, and when they must deal with situations involving people potentially carrying the novel coronavirus.
“We can debate the why and how all day long,” the police chief reportedly wrote in an email obtained by the local newspaper. Ocala Star-Banner. The point is, for the number of professionals who agree with wearing the mask, I can find exactly the same number of professionals who say why we shouldn’t wear it. ”
“In light of the latest events in connection with the feeling of hatred towards the police in our country, this is done to ensure clear communication and for purposes of identification of any individual entering our department”, reportedly he indicated to explain his decision, stressing that there has been no outbreak of cases in his team since the start of the pandemic.
In the county’s largest town, Ocala, the mayor and the local police chief refuse to force the population to wear the mask despite the emergency order approved by a city council vote.
“My boss and I talked about it, we’ll never give a ticket,” Mayor Kent Guinn said on local radio Monday. We just won’t do it. ”
Florida alone had 542,000 of the 5.1 million – about 10% – U.S. cases of COVID-19 as of this writing. Of the 276 deaths from the novel coronavirus reported by the Worldometers source in 24 hours, 13 were from Marion County. In total, more than 8,600 people have died of the disease in this southern state, out of more than 164,000 deaths in the United States according to the count from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
“This is no longer a debate and there is no need to discuss (the wearing of the mask), however warns Sheriff Woods. Keep in mind that this pandemic is constantly changing the way things are done. Either way, my orders will have to be followed or my consequences will be promptly enforced. “
Refusing to wear a mask to help fight the COVID-19 epidemic is, however, equivalent to driving after drinking alcohol, according to the president of the Royal Society of London and Nobel laureate in chemistry Venki Ramakrishnan.
Several international reports point out that wearing a mask can significantly reduce the spread of viruses such as COVID-19.