Paris, Tenn.–Henry County Mayor Brent Greer has extended the county masking requirement order through Thursday night, October 8th. The existing order was set to expire this evening at midnight.
On Tuesday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed Executive Order 63 which continues to provide 89 rural Tennessee counties, including Henry County, the option to issue local masking requirements through October 30th to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
Henry County Mayor Brent Greer said, “Masking is working for Henry County. Our positive case numbers are continuing to trend downward averaging 3.2 cases reported each day for the past seven days. Presently, the county has 40 active COVID-19 cases, which again, is down from last week. I am pleased the Governor is relaxing some orders such as allowing Senior Citizen Centers to gather in person and reinstating visitation in long term care facilities. This does not mean we should let our guard down. We need to continue to follow best practices to remain healthy.”
During a meeting of the Henry County COVID Coordination Team on Wednesday morning, the administration of Henry County Medical Center were very pleased of the recent decline of COVID inpatient averages.
Lisa Casteel, Henry County Medical Center CEO, said, “We attribute the masking orders in our community to slowing the Coronavirus spread enough to keep needed surgeries ongoing, allowing for a more relaxed visitation policy at our facilities, and reducing the number of COVID Critical Care Unit inpatients to todays total of zero. Masking helps to decrease the number of inpatient positive and highly suspect inpatients. We have had a high of eight inpatients and a high of twelve highly suspect inpatients patients. As of September 30th, we have three positive inpatients and three highly suspect inpatients. We feel it is not the time to rescind our masking order when we are making such good progress.”
Paris City Manager Kim Foster said to the group: “When looking at the Tennessee Department of Health data and comparing our positive case numbers to the other counties in West Tennessee, I can’t help but think our masking efforts have made a difference. We have one of the lowest counts in all of West TN. I know that masking is still very controversial, but I fully support the difficult decision made by Mayor Greer and appreciate his desire to help our community stay as healthy as possible.”
The Henry County Health Dept continues to provide free COVID testing Monday – Friday from 8:30AM to 10:30 AM by appointment only.