SAN PATRICIO COUNTY, Texas — San Patricio County commissioners met Sept. 28 and agreed to allow the mask mandate to expire Wednesday, Sept. 30.
“Right now, I think it’s the right time to very cautiously move forward,” said James Mobley, the county health authority.
Mobley said the decision is a part of the effort to look forward to what a normal future could look like without masks.
The county took a chance by not choosing to renew the mask order enforcement.
“We've got to move forward. Someone said a ship in a port is safe but that's not what ships are for. That's kind of where we're at here, it's always safe to continue the mask order but at some time we need to start looking at what the future looks like,” said Mobley. “We're hoping at this time, that this is going to work out well, we're going to be watching very carefully of course.”
Mobley said his recommendation to allow the order to expire came from his monitoring of the continuous decline in the county’s COVID-19 cases.
“I was in favor, as long as our numbers are staying where it is,” said David Krebs, the county judge.
If cases begin to rise at some point, Krebs said he will, without a doubt, re-sign the order and make it effective again.
“The governor has his mask order in effect, people can still wear their masks if they want to, municipalities can continue to enforce it if they want to, I’m just not ordering a county wide mask enforcement covering,” said Krebs.
San Patricio County was not entitled to an exemption from Governor Greg Abbott’s mask orders as of Sept. 28.
That exemption is only given to counties with 20 or less active cases, at the time the Texas Department of State Health Services reported San Patricio County to have 111 active cases.
“I will still enforce it in all the San Patricio County facilities,” said Krebs. Krebs continued to enforce the masks in county facilities but wanted to leave flexibility of the decision up to cities within the county limits.