Savannah mayor says city is ‘still a-go’ for 2022 St. Patrick’s Day parade amid COVID surge
Savannah is still planning to hold its annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in March despite Chatham County’s recent record-breaking uptick in COVID infections, Mayor Van Johnson told reporters at Tuesday’s weekly media briefing.
“We might have to make some modifications in light of what we’re dealing with, it might be less units, it might be a slightly different route, but right now we’re still a-go,” Johnson said of the parade, which was canceled in 2020 and 2021 for COVID-19.
Savannah’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration is among the largest in the country, regularly drawing half a million visitors to the Hostess City for the parade and weekend festival.
But Chatham County is in worse shape for COVID infections than it was during previous cancellations. As of Monday, the county had a seven-day average of 696 new COVID cases reported each day, up from an average of 22 new cases per day one month earlier.
That’s in line with trends in neighboring Beaufort County, which set another new case record on Friday with 618 newly confirmed infections, according to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Johnson said Tuesday that he and the Savannah Parade Committee met last week and that they are monitoring virus numbers locally and globally.
“It appears that in some areas now the numbers are plateauing and they’re expected to rapidly go down,” he said.
