BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — Wood County Health Comissioner Ben Batey addressed the coronavirus spread in his community on a YouTube video Monday.
Batey said the number of positive cases reported in the county continued to increase over the weekend, although the number of hospitalizations remained the same.
Data from the Ohio Department of Health shows the number of cumulative positive cases went from 505 on Thursday to 510 on Sunday. The cumulative number of hospitalizations stayed at 71.
Batey said he expects positive cases to keep increasing in the following days as contact tracing expands, leading more people to get tested. This would make the county remain at level three for a while until the number of cases decreases, he said.
"As we trackback contacts and people who were potentially exposed, they are going for testing, which is then leading to more positive cases and more individuals for us to follow up with. And that's a good thing because the more we can start to isolate individuals, the quicker we can slow the spread of this virus," Batey said.
Batey also talked about the mask mandate the state of Ohio issued last week.
He asked the public to contact the health department and report businesses that are consistently not requiring face coverings or people repeatedly not wearing masks in a public establishment.
"We obviously here at the health department don't have the ability to run around and individually enforce a face-covering requirement for one person who may decide to take their face covering off if they are in a public location," he said.
He added one of the safest ways to slow down the spread of the virus is to wear face coverings.
"We ask for your help in doing this (wearing face coverings). We want to be a model for the state to show that the advisory alert system works," Batey said.
You can watch the full video below:
