Sheriff who said he wouldn’t enforce state’s stay-at-home order positive for Covid-19
Lamb said he would talk to residents in the jurisdiction near Phoenix about complying with the order. But he wouldn’t criminally enforce it.
“I think people want to know that we’re going to support their constitutional rights,” he told the newspaper. “I felt (Ducey) pushed me into a position where I needed to make our stance clear.”
The sheriff said he was invited to an event Tuesday at the White House and was screened. Though he was asymptomatic, he tested positive for the coronavirus.
Neither the sheriff nor the event’s attendees wear masks in the video, it shows.
Lamb will self-quarantine for at least 14 days, he said Wednesday. The Pinal County Public Health Department was working to track everyone he came into contact with after the campaign event, he said.
Cases in Arizona are surging again
The data includes new cases reported through Tuesday by Johns Hopkins.
Ducey resisted broad calls from physicians across his state to implement a statewide mandate for wearing masks in public places.
Instead, he said Wednesday that he would leave that up to mayors because the level of transmission varies from region to region.
Ducey also announced he would be calling up to 300 National Guardsmen to help with contact tracing in the state, though he did not provide a date for the deployment.
Asked whether he believed such measures would be enough at a political rally, Ducey called such events voluntary, emphasizing that “we’re going to protect people’s rights to assemble especially in an election year.”
CNN’s Madeline Holcombe, Kyung Lah, Kim Berryman and Jack Hannah contributed to this report.
