Doctors To Kemp: Mandate Masks

ATLANTA, GA — A letter to Gov. Brian Kemp signed by more than 2,100 Georgia health care professionals is urging more-aggressive measures — including mandatory masks — to slow the spread of COVID-19.

“We firmly believe that if policy decisions are made based on science, economic benefits will follow,” the letter read. “Now is the time to update policies to align with current science.”

The letter, copied also to Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey, was released Friday to news media.

After pointing out Georgia’s rapidly increasing number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths — along with the shrinking number of intensive care beds in hospitals — the letter recommends:

• Mandate temporarily that cloth face masks be worn outside the home.
• Allow localities to implement stricter measures.
• Where the seven-day average of positive coronavirus tests is greater than 10 percent, close bars and gyms, require strict social distancing in restaurants and limit gatherings to 10 or fewer people.

The mask mandate and leeway for localities are both sensitive subjects for Kemp. Although Kemp himself has worn a mask and aggressively promoted using them — as the letter points out — he also has refused to make anyone else wear them. When the city of Atlanta tried to mandate masks, Kemp sued Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and the City Council to stop them, saying that the law was “unenforceable.” Their dispute is now in mediation.

The letter also recommended more testing and contact tracing, along with working to eliminate the ways that COVID-19 harms some races and ethnicities more than others.

“Our letter reiterates that basic public health interventions work, but they need to be forcefully implemented at the state level to be effective,” Dr. Carlos del Rio, a professor of global health and epidemiology, told WXIA-TV in Atlanta.

Other lead signatories include Dr. Jesse Couk, chair of Infectious Diseases at Shepherd Center; Dr. Sophie Lukashok, president, Infectious Diseases Society of Georgia; and Yolanda Wimberley, a professor of pediatrics with Morehouse School of Medicine.

The complete letter — along with a list of all signers — was posted Saturday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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