Orange County mayor considers return to mask mandate as COVID cases rise

Facial recognition FILE PHOTO: Selfies may not be the only photos taken of guests at Walt Disney World. The theme park company is testing a facial recognition system for the next month. (Olga Thompson/WDWNews.com)

By Joe Kelley

The mayor of Orange County, Florida -- the home of Disney World and Universal Orlando -- is asking residents to start wearing masks again amid a spike in COVID-19 cases.

Mayor Jerry Demings says the positivity rate in Orange County has risen from 4.28 percent to nearly 14 percent in the past month. Of the new cases, 95 percent involve patients who haven’t been vaccinated, Demings adds.

Although Demings hasn’t gone so far as to make masks mandatory again, he says he’s “considering” it.