WELLINGTON, Ohio — With Lorain County currently at a Level 3 (red) in the state's COVID-19 alert scale, the mayor of Wellington is asking organizers of the Lorain County Fair to cancel next month's festivities at the fairgrounds in his village.
In a letter written Friday to the Lorain County Fair Board, Mayor Hans Schnieder laid out his case as to why coronavirus has made holding the fair simply too unsafe.
"Unfortunately, for everyone, the numbers are trending in the wrong direction. Positive case numbers are up and our county is at a Level 3. There is no such thing as a safe fair anymore," Scheider wrote.
The Lorain County Fair is the second largest fair in the state, regularly attracting more than 100,000 people to Wellington, according to Schneider. "Let’s assume we could test each visitor to the fair for Covid-19. Right now testing nationwide is yielding a positive test rate of over 8%. Let’s cut the fair attendance to 50,000. With an 8% rate that’s 4,000 positive cases walking around the fair, potentially interacting with our residents and our businesses," he stated.
Scheider also expressed concerns that visitors to the fair stop for gas, groceries if they are camping and take a stroll downtown before or after they attend the fair. "Add in interactions with residents at the fair and the window for potential infections here is wide open," he cautioned.
Schneider's letter to the Lorain County Fair Board comes on the same day that the state of Ohio experienced the largest daily case spike of COVID-19 since the pandemic began. More than 1,600 new cases were reported.
"If the potential of infection doesn’t move you, perhaps the death rate will. With a nationwide death rate currently of 3.9 percent, it’s abundantly clear not everyone survives," Schneider continued. "Are you willing to gamble that a member of your family, a friend or a member of your community won’t contract and/or die from Covid-19 as a result of holding the fair?"
The Lorain County Fair is scheduled to be held August 23-30.
You can read the entire letter from Schneider below.
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