Ocean Springs mayor tests positive for COVID-19
Ocean Springs Mayor Shea Dobson has tested positive for COVID-19, he told city Alderman Rickey Authement in a phone call today.
Authement said Ocean Springs City Hall will be sanitized tomorrow and Saturday. The mayor has been quarantining since last Tuesday, when he didn’t attend a Board of Aldermen meeting because he was awaiting the results of a virus test.
“He hasn’t been around anybody,” Authement said. “He’s been quarantined since way before.”
Dobson also confirmed that he had tested positive in interviews with WLOX and WXXV. He did not respond to a request for comment from the Sun Herald.
The mayor told WLOX that he first got a coronavirus test last week, after a friend staying at his house began experiencing symptoms. The friend’s test came back positive, but Dobson’s was negative. After he started having symptoms over the weekend, he took another test on Monday and got the positive result on Tuesday.
The mayor told WLOX that his symptoms were mild, with a low-grade fever and periodic cough. Authement said Dobson had told him he “really wasn’t feeling that bad.”
Authement said several employees in the city’s public works department had previously tested positive for COVID-19, and that office had also been deep-cleaned.
The cases in Ocean Springs come as the virus is surging in south Mississippi. Additionally, Mississippi currently has the highest test positivity rate in the country, with 25% of people testing positive, indicating that transmission is rampant.
Dobson is likely the first city official on the Coast to test positive for COVID-19. But several south Mississippi state legislators contracted the virus during the legislative session in Jackson.
State Rep. Manly Barton, R-Moss Point, spent time on a ventilator fighting the virus.
This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 5:48 PM.
