news-journal.com Longview News-Journal, Friday, July 3, 2020 3A

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FROM STAFF REPORTS

Free COVID-19 testing will be offered several times in the next few days in Longview.

No appointment or prescreening is need-ed for the walk-up testing, which does not require a person to be showing symptoms of COVID-19. Those being tested are asked to provide a phone number where they can be reached with their results.

Testing will be conducted on a first-

come, first-served basis: ■ 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. today: Longview Ex-

hibit Center, 1123 Jaycee Drive ■ 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday: Broughton

Recreation Center, 801 S. Martin Luther Blvd.

■ 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday: Pine Tree High School Theater Building, 1005 W. Fairmont St.

■ 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday: Pine Tree ISD Auditorium, 1803 Pine Tree Road

Free COVID-19 testing offered

Company of Oklahoma. SWEPCO will own 810 MW, or 54.5%, of the 1,485-MW project with an investment of $1.01 bil-lion. SWEPCO and PSO will acquire the projects at their completion over the next two years.

In addition to the en-vironmental benefits of wind energy, SWEPCO’s

Arkansas and Louisiana customers will save an estimated $2 billion over the 30-year expected life of the new facilities.

PSO received final Oklahoma Corporation Commission approval Feb. 20 of a settlement agreement in its plan to add 675 megawatts of wind energy.

The Federal Energy

Regulatory Commission has approved the acquisi-tion of the wind facilities by SWEPCO and PSO.

SWEPCO serves more than 536,300 customers in three states, includ-ing 231,000 in Northwest and Central Louisiana, 185,500 in Northeast Tex-as and the Texas Panhan-dle and 119,800 in West Arkansas.

SWEPCOFrom Page 1A

tests in Gregg County, in-cluding 2,826 negative and 178 pending results, Harris said.

Gregg County Health Au-thority Dr. Lewis Browne said all 20 cases are a result of community spread. He noted that both testing, in-cluding recent community testing sites, and COVID-19 positive cases have seen an upswing.

While cases might be ris-ing, the number of patients being treated for the corona-virus at Longview hospitals remained at 37. Local hospi-tals are nowhere near capac-ity unlike hospitals in bigger cities, Browne said.

Abbott’s mask order states that Texans must wear a face covering over their nose and mouth in public places in counties with 20 or more positive COVID-19 cases with some exceptions. The order is ef-fective at 12:01 p.m. today.

According to Abbott’s or-der, after a written or verbal warning for a first-time vio-lator, a person could have to pay a fine not to exceed $250 for their second violation. Further violations would be punished by a fine not to ex-ceed $250 each time.

Exceptions for the order include counties with case counts lower than 20 being able to opt out, children who are younger than 10 years old and people with medi-cal conditions that prevent

them from safely wearing facial coverings.

Regarding enforcement, Gregg County Bill Stoudt said the county’s legal team is reviewing the order as en-forcement of mask wearing could be challenging. He ex-pects there could be a couple of verbal warnings for those not wearing masks.

Stoudt said the decision of ticketing people for not wearing would have to be made by the Gregg County Sheriff’s Office.

Gregg County area offi-cials have been encouraging people to social distance, use good hygiene and wear masks during gatherings since February. The main focus locally is educating the public about the preven-tive measures, Stoudt said.

“We have to care for each other,” Stoudt said.

Browne said enforcement will be difficult, and he’s not particularly in favor of pen-alties. Browne has been en-couraging county residents to wear masks in areas like large stores.

“I’m glad he did some-thing to get people’s atten-tion,” he said.

Browne said people pro-tecting themselves with a mask helps protect others as well.

Harrison County cases rose by 12 Thursday for new total of 327, which includes 30 deaths, 234 recoveries and 63 active cases, Harrison County Judge Chad Sims

said.In Upshur County, there

are 68 confirmed cases, in-cluding 38 recoveries and 30 active cases, according to the county’s website.

In Smith County, COVID-19 cases rose by 45 Thursday for a current ac-tive count of 402 as Tyler hospitals are now treating 69 East Texas patients for the virus.

The county’s cumula-tive count has reached 699, which includes 402 active cases, 293 recoveries and four deaths, according to the Northeast Texas Public Health District.

The count of patients from East Texas being treat-ed in Tyler hospitals is down seven from Wednesday.

Van Zandt County has 101 cases, including three deaths and 35 recoveries, NET Health reported.

Henderson County has 160 cases, including four deaths and 73 recoveries, ac-cording to NET Health.

Wood County has 94 COVID-19 cases, including the deaths of five Winnsboro residents and 55 recoveries, according to NET Health.

Anderson County has 145 cases, including 94 re-coveries, according to NET Health. These numbers do not reflect inmates at the prisons in Tennessee Colo-ny.

Rains County has 13 cas-es, including six recoveries, NET Health reported.

RegionFrom Page 1A

with 20 or fewer active cases can be exempted — if they opt out. County judges must submit an application to be exempted to the Texas Di-vision of Emergency Man-agement. TDEM will list the counties that have opted out on its website.

The order represents a remarkable turnaround for Abbott, who has long resist-ed such a statewide mask re-quirement, even as the coro-navirus situation has gotten worse than ever over the past couple weeks in Texas. When he began allowing Texas businesses to reopen this spring, Abbott prohib-ited local governments from punishing people who do not wear masks. As cases began to rise earlier this month, he clarified that cities and counties could order busi-nesses to mandate custom-ers wear masks.

In recent days, Abbott had held firm against going fur-ther than that, saying he did not want to impose a state-wide requirement that may burden parts of the state that are not as badly affect-ed by the outbreak.

Abbott on Thursday also banned certain outdoor gatherings of over 10 peo-ple unless local officials approve. He had previously set the threshold at over 100 people. The new prohibition also goes into effect this af-ternoon.

Abbott’s latest moves come ahead of Fourth of July weekend, which has raised concerns about larg-er-than-usual crowds gath-ering while the state grap-ples with the virus spike.

Abbott also released a vid-eo message Thursday, say-ing the latest coronavirus numbers in the state “reveal a very stark reality.”

“COVID-19 is not going away,” he said. “In fact, it’s getting worse. Now, more than ever, action by every-one is needed until treat-ments are available for COVID-19.”

In the video, Abbott re-iterated his resistance to returning the state to the roughly monthlong stay-

at-home order he issued in April. He said Texans “must do more to slow the spread without locking Texas back down.” He also said his lat-est announcement is “not a stay-at-home order” but “just recognizes reality: If you don’t go out, you are less likely to encounter someone who has COVID-19.”

“We are now at a point where the virus is spreading so fast there is little margin for error,” he said.

Statewide, there were 7,915 new COVID-19 cases, while hospitalizations hit 7,382, the fourth straight day setting a record.

Abbott has been partic-ularly worried about the positivity rate, or the share of tests that come back pos-itive. That rate, presented by the state as a seven-day average, has jumped above its previous high of about 14% in recent days, ticking down to 13.58% on Tuesday. That is still above the 10% threshold that Abbott has long said would be cause for alarm amid the reopening process.

First-time offenders of Abbott’s order will receive a written or verbal warn-ing. Those who violate the order a second time will re-ceive a fine of up to $250. Ev-ery subsequent violation is punishable also by a fine of up to $250. The order speci-fies that no one can get jail time for a violation.

After listing several ex-ceptions to the mask re-quirement, Abbott’s order specifies at least one group of people is not exempted from the order: “any per-son attending a protest or demonstration” with over 10 people who cannot so-cially distance. Like oth-er states, Texas has seen massive protests following George Floyd’s death.

Democrats and local of-ficials had been demand-ing Abbott institute such a requirement, and the state party said his new order was “far too little, far too late.”

“This is unacceptable,” party spokesman Abhi Rah-man said in a statement. “Governor Abbott continues

to lead from behind rather than implementing preven-tive measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus.”

When asked at a Thurs-day afternoon press confer-ence about Abbott’s new or-der, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg simply said “It’s about time.”

“We will count this one as a good step that the gov-ernor is taking,” Nirenberg added.

Nirenberg was speaking alongside alongside Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and the leaders of the main hospitals in region when news of the order broke. Wolff was the first local of-ficial to order businesses to require their customers to wear masks.

“Now with the order by the governor, that’s going to help take a lot of pressure off the businesses,” he said.

But Abbott’s mask re-quirement is likely to fur-ther anger a small but vocal group of fellow Republicans in the Legislature who have grown increasingly frus-trated with his executive actions. Health experts say masks help slow the spread of the coronavirus, but some conservatives have railed against mask mandates, saying they impose on peo-ple’s freedoms.

One intraparty Abbott antagonist, state Rep. Jona-than Stickland of Bedford, vented after Abbott’s an-nouncement Thursday that the governor “FAILED TO MENTION” the mask man-date during a conference call with legislators.

“What a piece of crap!” Stickland tweeted. “The man thinks he is KING!”

State Rep. Tony Tinder-holt, R-Arlington, tweeted that lawmakers “need a special session now so leg-islators can pass laws, not Abbott.”

This is Abbott’s latest set of moves aimed at try-ing to get the virus surge under control in Texas. Six days ago, he ordered bars closed and reduced the permitted restaurant occupancy to 50%, among other things.

AbbottFrom Page 1A

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A fire and an explosion struck a centri-fuge production plant above Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear enrichment facility early Thursday, analysts said, one of the most-tightly guarded sites in all of the Is-lamic Republic after earlier acts of sabotage there.

The Atomic Energy Or-ganization of Iran sought to downplay the fire, call-ing it an “incident” that only affected an under-con-struction “industrial shed,” spokesman Behrouz Ka-malvandi said. However, both Kamalvandi and Ira-nian nuclear chief Ali Ak-bar Salehi rushed after the fire to Natanz, a facility ear-lier targeted by the Stuxnet computer virus and built underground to withstand enemy airstrikes.

The fire threatened to rekindle wider tensions across the Middle East, similar to the escalation in January after a U.S. drone strike killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad and Tehran launched a retalia-tory ballistic missile attack targeting American forces in Iraq.

While offering no cause for Thursday’s blaze, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agen-cy published a commentary addressing the possibility of sabotage by enemy na-tions such as Israel and the

U.S. following other recent explosions in the country.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has so far has tried to prevent intensifying crises and the formation of un-predictable conditions and situations,” the commen-tary said. But ”the crossing of red lines of the Islamic Republic of Iran by hos-tile countries, especially the Zionist regime and the U.S., means that strategy ... should be revised.”

The fire began around 2 a.m. local time in the northwest corner of the Natanz compound in Iran’s central Isfahan province, according to data collected by a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminis-tration satellite that tracks fires from space.

Images later released by Iranian state media show a two-story brick building with scorch marks and its roof apparently destroyed. Debris on the ground and a door that looked blown off its hinges suggested an explo-sion accompanied the blaze.

“There are physical and financial damages and we are investigating to assess,” Kamalvandi told Iranian state television. “Further-more, there has been no interruption in the work of the enrichment site. Thank God, the site is continuing its work as before.”

In Washington, the State

Department said that U.S. officials were “monitoring reports of a fire at an Irani-an nuclear facility.”

“This incident serves as another reminder of how the Iranian regime con-tinues to prioritize its mis-guided nuclear program to the detriment of the Irani-an people’s needs,” it said.

The site of the fire corre-sponds to a newly opened centrifuge production fa-cility, said Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonpro-liferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of In-ternational Studies in Mon-terey, California.

Hinz said he relied on sat-ellite images and a state TV program on the facility to lo-cate the building, which sits in Natanz’s northwest corner.

David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security sim-ilarly said the fire struck the production facility. His institute previously wrote a report on the new plant, identifying it from satellite pictures while it was un-der construction and later built.

Iranian nuclear officials did not respond to a request for comment about the an-alysts’ comments. However, any damage to the facility would be a major setback, said Hinz, who called the fire “very, very suspicious.”

Analysts: Fire at Iran nuclear site struck centrifuge facility