Lavin, Meads, and Overman Pushed To Lift Covid Restrictions In Pasquotank

Written By Christina Williams

At Monday night’s Pasquotank County Commissioner meeting the Commissioners voted unanimously to lift the State of Emergency within Pasquotank County in regards to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Albemarle Regional Health Services (ARHS) Director Battle Betts along with Emergency Management Director Brian Parnell spoke to update the board on the current status of the Covid threat level to our community and the success of our vaccination clinics. They were concerned that with the hurricane season coming up that the Covid State of Emergency would overlap the coming storm threats and cause confusion that would lead to people being less prepared this season. They said last year was a very mild storm season and that there was a greater potential to see people being less prepared this year.  After their presentation Chairman Lloyd Griffin asked each Commissioner for comments and questions.

Commissioner Jonathan Meads started off by talking about some statistics from other states in relation to our state. He thought the county needed to show businesses support. Commissioner Sean Lavin previously made a motion in March to lift the restrictions but the question was raised about whether the county was able to do it under grant funding requirements.  Watch the full comments by Meads and Lavin:

By the time the roundtable discussion got to Commissioner Barry Overman there wasn’t much else to say except that he supported and agreed with Meads and Lavin.

County Manager Sparty Hammett and Emergency Management Director Brian Parnell had researched the funding requirements and did not see any reason that the county was forced into keeping the restrictions in place.

By the time the vote made it to the floor to lift the State of Emergency enough support for lifting the restrictions had been given and since it was not interfering with any grant funding conditions required of the county all of the Commissioners voted unanimously. Bill Sterritt was absent from this meeting, but previously when it was brought up he supported lifting the restrictions as well.

The three Republican County Commissioners in Pasquotank were united in pushing to get this moved forward to get our county in a recovery phase. But, as ARHS director Betts said previously, local officials hope to see people still voluntarily maintaining good hand washing and social distance practices when possible to avoid all communicable diseases.

The restrictions within Pasquotank County were lifted as of 8am Tuesday, April 20th, 2021.  North Carolina originally enacted a State of Emergency on March 10th, 2020 imposing Covid restrictions and Pasquotank enacted it on March 17th, 2020.

To watch the full meeting check our Pasquotank County Commissioner Meeting Videos page.