VERO BEACH – The City Council on Tuesday is scheduled to consider an emergency measure requiring people to wear face coverings while “in any indoor public place” in the Vero city limits to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Councilman Rey Neville, who recently recovered from COVID-19, placed the proposed ordinance on the agenda. For discussion, the city is looking at an ordinance from the Gulf coastal city of Punta Gorda in Charlotte County near Fort Myers.
The proposed ordinance includes several exemptions for children age 2 and younger, for people exercising outdoors and continuously practicing social distancing, and for people doing a job they cannot do wearing a face covering. People with a health exemption, people eating or drinking and public safety workers using job-mandated PPE would also be exempt should Vero essentially adopt the Punta Gorda ordinance.
A previous attempt three weeks ago to require face masks in the city failed by one vote, but since then, positive cases of COVID-19 in the city have more than doubled. There has also been a hike in hospitalizations and deaths.
Prior to the consideration of a citywide mask mandate, the council is set to hear an update from Dr. Charles Callahan of Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital on COVID-19 locally.
The full text of the agenda item backup is available at
https://www.covb.org/DocumentCenter/View/4247/6A-4
The city council meets at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, July 21 at City Hall. Meetings are televised on Channel 13 and broadcast via live stream at www.covb.org.