Fort Bend County published a copy of the judge's order mandating the use of face coverings inside commercial entities on its coronavirus website.
According to the order, it will effective between 12:01 a.m. June 25 through 11:59 p.m. June 30.
Churches and places of worship are excluded from the order.
Original story published 7:49 p.m. June 23
At a June 23 press conference, Fort Bend County Judge KP George announced he signed an order requiring face masks be worn inside commercial retail businesses physically located within the county.
This order becomes effective midnight June 25. Businesses will be required to post signage about the required face masks inside their store, and they can deny service to customers who do not wear masks, George said.
An end date for the order was not announced at the conference, and the judge's office did not immediately respond to Community Impact Newspaper's inquiry.
County District Attorney Brian Middleton said law enforcement can issue citations to businesses if customers are not wearing face coverings, but this should not be a law enforcement matter.
Violations could result in a $500 fine, County Attorney Roy Cordes Jr said. Businesses are held accountable for employees and guests wearing face masks, not individuals, he added.
“You should take responsibility for protecting your own health and protecting the health of others,” Middleton said.
The data
This order follows a county survey in which 77.5% of 17,500 respondents said they were in favor of a mask ordinance, George said. He said he also consulted local retailers, faith leaders and medical experts to come to this decision.
Additionally, the order follows an increase of confirmed cases, the positivity testing rate and hospital bed usage in Fort Bend County, George said.
“Our stakeholders believe it's time for us to do something because this issue is kind of spiraling out of control,” George said.
The positivity rate of cases has increased about 7 percentage points over the past four to six weeks, said Jacquelyn Minter, Fort Bend County Health and Human Services Department director and local health authority.
“We were looking at 2%-3% in early May, and we're looking now at 9%-10% right now in Fort Bend County of the positivity rate, and that’s just the tests at our sites” Minter said. “We attribute that to increasing disease in the community [as the economy has reopened]. ... [We also attribute it] to the fact that we've had holidays; we've had more mass gatherings; people are in closer contact.”
Majid Basit, a physician and president of the Fort Bend Medical Society, said the hospitals are full of patients, not just with those who have COVID-19, but also those with broken hips, heart attacks and other medical emergencies.
“Prevention is the key, and if people don't listen, we're going to overwhelm our health care system, and then we're going to go back to having to quarantine again,” Basit said. “We don't want to go there.”
Data from The Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council—which tracks occupancy rates for a number of Houston-area counties—shows that as of June 22, there was a total of 713 patients in Fort Bend County hospitals, 141 of which were confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients in general or intensive care unit beds.
SETRAC estimates Fort Bend County hospitals have a general and ICU bed operational capacity total of 1,045 beds. If surge capacity is needed, the total number of general and ICU beds can grow to an estimated 1,255 beds.
This data shows that out of 1,045 beds, about 68.2% were in use by all patients, and 13.5% were in use by confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients.
Fort Bend County’s Community Impact Dashboard is reporting a total of 3,176 confirmed positive cases since the beginning of the pandemic, per data available at 6 p.m. June 23. There have been 50 deaths while 1,197 cases have recovered. Based on this data, the county has an active case count of 1,929.
