Pima County announced Tuesday it will keep its mask mandate in place despite Gov. Doug Ducey’s executive order barring local jurisdictions from making COVID-19 safety mitigations mandatory.
Ducey’s March 25 executive order rescinded local communities’ rights to keep mask mandates in place while abolishing caps on the number of customers allowed in establishments for social distancing.
After the Pima County Attorney’s Office indicated the governor doesn’t have the authority to override the county’s public health guidelines, the county announced it would continue mandating mask-wearing.
The mandate passed by the Board of Supervisors on Dec. 4 calls for everyone in the county over 5 years old to wear a mask with a few qualifying health exemptions.
The governor is not taking any action to curb the decisions of some cities and counties to ignore his directive that they scrap their mask mandates.
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Pima County officials announced Tuesday that ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Gov. Doug Ducey does not have to legal authority to prevent the County Health Department from enacting reasonable public health measures. Therefore, the mask mandate passed by the county Dec. 4 is still in effect.
Gubernatorial spokesman C.J. Karamargin on Tuesday dismissed as “inconsequential†that several communities have decided to maintain their ordinances requiring people to mask up in certain situations. That includes not just in public buildings and transit, which Ducey has said is OK, but also in businesses and restaurants that the governor said are free to tell employees and customers they need no longer wear masks.
“They’ve never enforced the mask mandates,†he said of the local laws.
Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry acknowledged that neither the city nor the county has issued citations. But he said that doesn’t make them ineffective or irrelevant.
“What it is, basically, is a high degree of voluntary compliance,†Huckelberry said.
“If you rescind it, you send the message that it’s no longer necessary,†he continued. “Well, it is necessary, based on public-health standards and infection rates per 100,000 people.â€
As statewide business guidelines switch from requirements to recommendations, Dr. Francisco Garcia, the county’s chief medical officer, says the county is holding its ground as the number of COVID-19 infections in the county has increased for the first time in 10 weeks.
According to the county Health Department, coronavirus cases have crept up from 463 the third week of March to 479 the fourth week.
The chief medical officer also stressed the increasing importance of mask-wearing with the emergence of more contagious COVID-19 variants.
“The same kinds of mitigation measures that allow us to prevent transmission for the normal, garden-variety of COVID are going to be the same ones that allow us to prevent transmission with these potentially more infectious, more transmissible variants,†he said.
Although the governor’s executive order prevents local jurisdictions from enforcing mask mandates, Garcia contends various ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ statutes give counties the authority to regulate public health by adopting their own provisions. The exact legal arguments the county attorney provided are covered by attorney-client privilege.
However, the county said the arguments reflect those made in the lawsuit the county faced for its mandatory curfew imposed in December. The Pima County Superior Court ordered the county to stop enforcing the curfew.
While he acknowledged the legal arguments are similar to the court case that went against the county, Garcia said he believes the county stands “on solid ground†when it comes to continuing the mask mandate and is ready for any legal challenges.
“This has been an overreach on the part of the executive. It’s up to the Legislature, and not the governor, to decide what authorities the counties are granted,†he said. “Aside from vaccination, the best thing that we have in our pocket is mask usage. We’re going to exercise that tool in order to be able to protect the health and well-being of the citizens of this county.â€
The enforcement process for ensuring mask usage in public areas remains the same. People violating the mask ordinance face a $50 fine while businesses face a $500 fine and the possible loss of their license to operate.
Garcia said the Health Department’s inspectors use a “three strikes and you’re out†process. The department will call business operators once it receives a complaint and warn them of the consequences of their continued violation. On the third warning, businesses face a fine and permit loss.
While the chief medical officer said no business has faced these consequences yet, the county Health Department intends to “use whatever enforcement capacity†it has to enforce mask-wearing.
Ducey’s executive order justified the loosening of restrictions based on increased vaccinations and declining case counts. For Pima County to ease restrictions, Garcia says the county needs to reach community immunity with about 75% of the population vaccinated.
Approximately 20% of Pima County residents are now fully vaccinated, according to Garcia.
ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Mayor Regina Romero took the same stance of continuing the city’s mask mandate on the day Ducey released his executive order.
“Gov. Ducey’s actions are premature and will jeopardize ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ lives unnecessarily,†she said. “The vast majority of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ns are not fully vaccinated, and the threat of more contagious, lethal variants remains.â€
While Garcia said “the end is in sight,†he maintains mitigation measures such as masking and social distancing are still needed to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“If we can just get folks to continue to adhere to these relatively easy measures for another two, three months, we will be able to have achieved that level of vaccination that really allows this community to take a deep breath,†he said. “We are not there yet, and we cannot pretend that the behaviors we’re engaged in in public don’t impact the health and well-being of others.â€
10 things learned from the 'pandemic doctors' during COVID fight
1. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he would have been horrified if he knew a year ago that 500,000 Americans would eventually lose their lives to Covid-19.
"I would have been horrified that that was even a possibility," Fauci said.
Asked if there was a moment when he knew the danger was going to be big, Fauci said "When I saw what happened in New York City, almost overrunning of our health care system, it was like, 'Oh my goodness.' "
"That's when it became very clear that the decision we made on January the 10th -- to go all out and develop a vaccine -- may have been the best decision that I've ever made with regard to an intervention as director of the institute."
2. Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House's coronavirus response coordinator under Trump, said the majority of those deaths could have been prevented.
"I look at it this way -- the first time we have an excuse. There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge," Birx said. "All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially."
The US has now seen more than 548,000 Covid-19 deaths.
3. Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Trump, said he believes the novel coronavirus began transmitting in the fall of 2019 and may have originated in a lab in China.
Redfield cited no evidence. The "lab leak" theory has been cited in pandemic conspiracies, including in statements from Trump.
"I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely aetiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory. You know, escaped. Other people don't believe that. That's fine. Science will eventually figure it out," Redfield said, noting that this may not have been intentional.
A World Health Organization team is exploring the origins of the virus in Wuhan, China, and has noted that it is "extremely unlikely" that a lab-related incident spurred the global pandemic.
Meanwhile, Chinese officials and state media have promoted an unsubstantiated, so-called "multiple-origin" theory, suggesting the pandemic may have started in various locations around the world, even a US military lab.
Redfield said there could have been a significant benefit to having US investigators on the ground in China to study the coronavirus early in the pandemic.
"I think we could have learned very quickly that we're dealing with a different beast than the one that everyone had sold us," Redfield said.
"A year after this pathogen started, we're now having a critical analysis of where it came from by scientists," he added. "That just seems a little delayed. I mean, it seems to me that some of the information is people are not being transparent about it. I could use the word 'cover up,' but I don't know that so I'm not going to speculate that."
China has denied any cover up.
"They sold us: 'This is like SARS.' 'This is like flu.' Well, SARS and flu, you can go after symptomatic case findings because they cause symptomatic disease," Redfield said. "Unfortunately, this virus, probably a majority of its transmission is in the non-symptomatic stage."
Fauci also revealed that he "always had skepticism" about the Covid-19 data being reported out of China.
"I always had skepticism about it because of what we went through with SARS," Fauci said
"China was saying, 'Oh it's flu, it's flu.' And then the next thing you know, SARS was all over the world -- in Canada, in Australia, all over the place," he added. "So, they were not very transparent in the past. It wasn't outright lying. They just didn't give you all the information.
4. Birx joined the White House coronavirus task force, in part, because she wanted the Trump administration to stop playing down the risk that Covid-19 posed to Americans.
She said she saw the damage that the virus had done in Europe and knew the US would not be spared.
"So, now you know why I came to the White House," Birx said. "Because I could see the avalanche coming, and I could see that we were not prepared, and I thought I could do something."
Birx was not able to do quite as much as she had hoped. After speaking out in August about the coronavirus pandemic being "extraordinarily widespread" across both rural and urban communities in the US, Birx received a call from former President Trump, after which she says she was blocked from speaking about the pandemic nationally.
"I got called by the President. It was very uncomfortable, very direct and very difficult to hear," Birx said.
Asked if President Trump threatened her, Birx said "I would say it was a very uncomfortable conversation."
CNN has reached out to Trump's office for comment on the documentary.
Birx said she took her public warnings about the pandemic to a local level.
She said she would speak frankly "with regional and local press and governors and mayors -- and be very clear about mask mandates and closing bars and severely restricting indoor dining and all of these elements that I was never allowed to say nationally.
Asked if she was being censored, Birx said "Clearly someone was blocking me from doing it. My understanding is I could not be national because the President might see it."
She added "He felt very strongly that I misrepresented the pandemic in the United States, that I made it out to be much worse than it is. I feel like I didn't even make it out as bad as it was."
5. Dr. Robert Kadlec, former US assistant secretary of Health and Human Services under Trump, and Admiral Brett Giroir, the US Health and Human Services assistant secretary under Trump, said the state of the US emergency supply chain of personal protective gear, medicines, ventilators and other medical equipment was a mystery at the beginning of the pandemic.
"When we started the pandemic in January, we really didn't know what the status of the supply chain was. We didn't know what hospitals had on hand. We didn't know what the state supplies were. We didn't even know what the commercial distributors had on their shelves," Kadlec said.
Giroir (pictured) said the nation had to start "from scratch."
"We had no systems in place. The way to find out how many ventilators were being used is to call up and see. Well, who are the manufacturers? We don't know," Giroir said. "What's the supply chain? We don't know. How many tests do we have in the stockpile? Well, there was no test in the stockpile. How many swabs do we have? We didn't have a single swab. So all of this was starting from scratch."
6. Birx said there were too many streams of data presented to former Trump about the coronavirus pandemic, which may have had an impact on policy decisions that were -- or were not -- made.
She said that some of those data streams stemmed from Trump's controversial coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, who she eventually refused to attend meetings with, because she did not want to legitimize his position.
"At one time, the President looked at the data and understood the data because he wouldn't have shut down the country for 15 days and then another 30 -- but that never really happened again, because there were too many parallel streams of data" Birx said.
7. Fauci said Trump's push to reopen the nation early in the pandemic, against the recommendations of doctors and health experts, was like a punch to the chest.
"The thing that hit me like a punch to the chest was then all of a sudden he got up and says, 'liberate Virginia,' 'liberate Michigan,' and I said to myself, 'Oh my goodness, what is going on here?' It shocked me because it was such a jolt to what we were trying to do," Fauci said.
Fauci's account is in line with statements made by Birx.
"The one policy directive he gave to me in April, which was the last time I really had any briefing with him in that kind of way, was, 'We will never shut the country down again,'" Birx said.
8. Redfied and Dr. Stephen Hahn (pictured), the commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration under Trump, spoke about a challenging -- and at times, contentious -- relationship with former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
"I didn't have really very difficult challenges with the White House. The challenges I had were with the office of the Secretary," Redfield said. "I think some of the ones that were the most notable, that I was the most offended by, was the calls that wanted me to pressure and change the MMWR."
The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report or MMWR is the agency's published roundup of important research and recommendations. Redfield said that he was asked to change the MMWR "on more than one occasion."
Azar responded in a statement to CNN saying, "Any suggestion that I pressured or otherwise asked Dr. Redfield to change the content of a single scientific, peer-reviewed MMWR article is false."
Hahn addressed reports that he and Azar once had a shouting match.
"I can 100% assure you that I did not shout and scream at the Secretary of Health and Human Services," said Hahn. When asked if Azar shouted at Hahn, Hahn replied, "You should ask him that question."
In a statement to CNN, Azar said, "the only intemperate conduct" on that call "was Dr. Hahn's threat to resign."
In a response to Azar's statement, Hahn said: "I did not yell on that phone call, and I did not threaten to resign."
9. Fauci, Birx, Hahn and Redfield formed their own "doctors' group" when the White House task force meetings stalled.
"We weren't secret about it. We were pretty open about it. It's just that not very many people knew about it," Fauci said.
"By that time, the task force was irregularly meeting," he added. "That was particularly when the campaign started and that's when we started with the doctors' group."
Birx described the group as "important," because her colleagues were attending House and Senate briefings.
"I wanted them armed with everything that I could give them," Birx said, referring to data.
10. Birx said that all of the doctors who served on Trump's White House coronavirus task force received death threats.
"All the doctors received death threats," Birx said.
"My daughters got the same rude text messages. I mean, you can't even imagine what those text messages looked like," she added. "A lot of sexual references, saying, 'The country would be better off if you were dead.' 'You're misleading the country.' 'Your tongue should be cut out.'"
Birx said that she originally would take the threats to the State Department, but eventually she "didn't have time."
Fauci also has spoken about the intimidation and harassment he and his family faced, which led him to beef up his security force.
