During a Paris City Council meeting held on Thursday evening, council members voted to extend the Disaster Declaration by 30-days.
In discussing extending the declaration, Mayor Steve Clifford said, “We’re going to need the help of everybody in the community and the community has to understand how important this is and take it to heart.”
Clifford also encouraged residents to go to the grocery store alone if possible and to not bring family members or young children unless you have no other option. He assured residents we don’t have an issue with supply but stated residents should not ‘panic buy’ and only get what these need.
Clifford further stated, at this point in time we still only have one confirmed case of COVID-19 in Lamar County despite rumors.
“I’m sure there are people in our community, in the entire country, who have coronavirus. I don’t know that for a fact simply because we haven’t been able to test but it is highly likely we have several people in our community who have it. Rural areas have limited abilities to test and I hope that will change but my fear is we do have people infected in our community and just don’t know,” said Clifford.
He further stated this why it is critically important to social distance.
“It can take a while for symptoms to develop and if we do have people in the community who are infectious it’s critically important to stop the spread of the virus.”
Council members also voted to postpone general election to November and named Benny Plata to the position held by Bill Trenado.
Read the original declaration below.
To read full Disaster Declaration, click here
