BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — The coronavirus pandemic is prompting a major change in Wood County.
On Thursday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine issued a mask mandate for the Wood County area, due to the rapid spread of the virus. The mandate was issued to begin at 6 p.m. on July 10 and is now in place.
Wood County Health Commissioner Ben Batey says he found out about an hour before Gov. DeWine made the announcement that his county was moving to "Level Red" in the COVID-19 advisory system.
"Hopefully it's an opportunity for Wood County residents to sit up and take notice and say we know we can control the spread of this virus, and one of the tools we have for that is face coverings, physical distancing, hand washing and all of those things," Batey said.
Batey says while the level red designation is alarming, Wood County hasn't seen an uptick in hospitalizations - it's mainly an issue of community spread at this point.
"There are people out there that are medically fragile, so if we all do our own little part, it can really help them have better outcomes versus saying, 'Oh, I'm not in that at-risk category, so I don't have to worry about it,'" Batey said.
Ohio is seeing its highest level of new cases since the end of May, so Dr. Kevin Casey, the chief clinical officer at Mercy Toledo, says right now having people wear masks is not perfect, but it's all about risk reduction.
"Within reason, I think we need to make sure we're not putting other people at risk. We know you can be infected by the COVID virus and spreading it and not knowing it," Dr. Casey said.
Dr. Casey says their hospital is prepared if a large number of people do get sick, but there are limits to ICU and hospital capacity.
It's something we've previously seen in Detroit and are now seeing in Florida and Texas.
"We do have limited amounts of PPE we have limited amounts of testing, we have limited amounts of material to treat people with, the medicines and the other ventilators that might be necessary and we have a limited number of staff and people that are trained to provide the high quality and safe care," Dr. Casey said.
So, what's the number one thing you can do to help medical professionals right now?
Wear a mask.
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