CAIRO — The Grady County Board of Commissioners has canceled an upcoming meeting in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

County Administrator Buddy Johnson said the meeting, set to take place Tuesday, April 21, will not be rescheduled.

“There was nothing pressing that had to be done immediately, so we just made the decision to cancel and wait until (May),” Johnson said. “Maybe by then there will be a break in this COVID thing and we can start having our meetings regularly. It may be wishful thinking, but it would be nice to see that.”

Though a full agenda had not yet been assembled at the time of the meeting’s cancellation, Johnson said items set to be discussed, such as renewing the county’s annual agreement with the University of Georgia Archway Partnership, could wait until the next regularly scheduled meeting May 5.

Recent commission meetings have been attended by groups larger than the 10 individuals the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends as the maximum for social gatherings. Regularly scheduled meetings on March 24 and April 2 had 14 and 13 people, respectively, including the commissioners themselves. Meeting attendees had their temperatures taken and were required to sign documents swearing that they have not displayed any symptoms of the coronavirus before entering the commissioner’s board room. An emergency meeting on March 27 had 20 people in attendance, with barely enough space to maintain the CDC-suggested six feet of social distance.

With Governor Brian Kemp having recently extended an emergency order to avoid large gatherings into next month, Johnson said the commissioners decided it would be best not to meet in person.

“It’s just not smart to do that right now,” he said.

As part of an effort to encourage citizens to remain home, the commissioners have turned to livestreaming meetings on social media in recent weeks. The commissioners have since purchased a camera more conducive to livestreaming to increase the quality of the video feed for future public meetings.

Johnson said the commissioners have not discussed hosting virtual meetings from their homes.

“We’re not really pressed for meetings, to be honest with you,” he said. “If we were having to meet two or three times a month that would be one thing, but right now, with everything like it is, it’s kind of slow and there’s nothing really to meet about beyond the basic stuff.”

Twenty-eight cases of COVID-19 have been positively identified in Grady County as of Thursday evening, according to the Grady County Health Department. At least one death has been attributed to the virus in the county.

With no indication of how long emergency measure will have to remain in place, Johnson said residents should continue to shelter at home, abide by local and state government orders and follow advice from the CDC — all things the county administrator said have been done exceptionally well in Grady County.

“I hate to say this because you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but the numbers are relatively low, considering our population and considering how all around us those numbers are so much higher,” Johnson said Tuesday prior to news of the county’s first death attributed to the virus. “Grady is doing something right. We just need to keep doing it.”