Large crowds inside Mobile’s big box retailers and grocery stores are still problematic, and public officials are looking to add more restrictions by Tuesday.

An order could come from Mobile County Health Officer Dr. Bert Eichold, who is one of only two county health officers in Alabama – the other being Jefferson County Health Officer Dr. Mark Wilson – who has wide-ranging authority to issue strict guidelines during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, during a news conference Monday, hinted Eichold could reveal a strict crowd limit of 10% of a store’s capacity. Currently, a store’s capacity is limited to 20%. That number was authorized after a 40% limit, issued in late March, was not enough.

Under the proposed change, a store with a capacity to hold 500 people inside the store at once, would be restricted to 50 people.

“We are not seeing the ability to social distance,” said Stimpson, referring to a weekend in which crowds gathered inside big box retailers – such as large home and garden stores - and grocery stores despite a “stay at home” order issued earlier this month by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey. The stay at home order, applicable statewide, runs until April 30.

Stimpson said the decision to limit the number of people inside the stores is coming from ongoing discussions he’s had with Mobile County Commissioner Merceria Ludgood and Eichold.

He said that Eichold’s order could also mandate that people visiting the big box retailers limit their purchases to “essential” only items.

Said Stimpson, “That’s part of the conversation … we are having tomorrow.”

Any order from Eichold, who was not at Monday’s news conference, would apply countywide.

In nearby Daphne, there are no plans to restrict capacity inside the big box retailers that proliferate Baldwin County’s largest city.

Mayor Dane Haygood said some stores are “self-limiting” the number of people inside them. He said he hasn’t observed big box retailers, such as Home Depot, crowded with more than 100 people inside at one time.

“I’ve not personally observed that,” said Haygood. “We’re not hearing concerns expressed by the public or observing things that are problematic.”

Haygood also said that Baldwin County isn’t experiencing near the spike in confirmed cases as Mobile County. As of Monday afternoon, there were 76 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Baldwin County, or about 7% of those who have been tested. There has been one death attributed to the virus.

The store capacity restrictions in Mobile come at a time when the county leads Alabama with 9 confirmed COVID-19 deaths, and 17 reported deaths related to the virus.

Mobile County has 496 confirmed cases, which consists of 21.7% of everyone who is tested for the virus. That’s considerably higher than in Jefferson County where 11% of those who receive a test are confirmed with having coronavirus.

The Mobile County Health Department denies that the county is a hot spot. The Health Department is pointing to per capita data which shows Mobile County at 110.8 cases per 100,000 residents, which is lower than some of the smaller counties in Alabama that have been hit hardest by the virus. Chambers County, with a population of 43,837 and with 212 confirmed cases, has the highest per capita rate of infection at 589.4.

But Mobile County’s per capita numbers are the highest when compared to the most populated counties in Alabama: Jefferson, Madison, Montgomery, Shelby and Tuscaloosa.

Dr. Rachael Lee, an epidemiologist at the UAB Hospital, compared the rates of COVID-19 growth in Mobile and Jefferson counties during a news conference in Birmingham. She said Jefferson County’s numbers, which initially spiked last month, are doubling every 13 days. Mobile’s numbers, she said, are doubling every 3.5 days.

Lee credited Jefferson County’s slowdown to what she said were early strict social distancing guidelines put into place by Wilson, the health officer with the Jefferson County Health Department, and Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin. Birmingham was the first city to implement a strict curfew, and Jefferson County was the first to close down restaurants and other businesses during last month’s unfolding reaction to the pandemic.

“I know it seems like we’ve done a lot of work and gone overboard a little bit, but it’s the most helpful thing toward bringing the numbers down,” said Lee.

In Mobile, the number of intensive care patients appears to be rising. Dr. Brian Sumrall, chief of medicine, at Springhill Medical Center in Mobile said that 10 of the hospital’s 25 COVID-19 patients are in the hospital’s ICU. He said that more testing is taking place, and the coronavirus-related ICU numbers could increase even further.

“It’s impossible to tell if this is the peak,” said Sumrall. “I pray that it is.”

Sumrall, however, said that the hospitals in Mobile are not close to being at full capacity. He said the “horror stories” about inundated in hospitals in Louisiana and New York “are not occurring here.”

Sumrall said it was “impossible to predict” why Mobile was leading the state in the number of deaths.

“We are following a standard of care (from) across the country,” he said. “The most frustrating thing about this disease is you can cross every t, and dot every I, and do everything to the nth-degree, and the patient gets sicker and sicker in front of you.”