NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas — ​​​Being the mayor of any city is a challenge, but being appointed in the middle of a global pandemic takes things to another level. 

New Braunfels Mayor Rusty Brockman recently assumed his new role at the end of May after serving on the City's chamber of commerce for several years. 

In his latest order, Gov. Greg Abbott required all tubing and rafting businesses in the state to close indefinitely as of Friday, June 26, in response to Texas's rapid surge of new coronavirus cases. 

With two rivers in the city and a strong reliance on tourism, New Braunfels is one of the cities in Texas feeling the strongest impact by the most recent order from the governor. 

Both the Comal and Guadalupe Rivers have seen large crowds since Memorial Day weekend, and photos circulating on social media show an apparent lack of distancing and patrons not wearing face masks at several tubing outfitters. 

Brockman says the city and tubing businesses were in the process of developing a new safety protocol for the river businesses that would incorporate more distancing mandates and limiting the amount of customers at a time, but that was before Abbott's order was put in place. 

"Our outfitters put a plan in place that was going to reduce the number of wristbands that each outfitter was going to be allowed to use per day," said Brockman. "They were going to make sure that they are social distancing as they queue up people into their site. It was a plan in place that the city and the outfitters had worked very hard on to get to an agreement. We feel like the social distancing, the masks outside the tent where they get their tubes, the masks on the shuttles when they return to their cars are extremely important.”

The City planned to enact the plan this past weekend before the governor issued his latest order, but Brockman says that the plan will still be put in place once tubing and rafting outfitters are allowed to reopen. Comal County is seeing a rapid increase in cases, going from 99 positive cases on June 1 to 470 cases on June 29, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. 

Brockman says the lab which processes the city's coronavirus tests became so overwhelmed that it was forced to temporarily pause testing this week, with the goal of resuming tests on July 1.  

"As the need increases and the doctor's offices and hospitals note that there's more and more people wanting to test, then we need to sit down with the county health office and our medical director to see where we need to go and what we need to do to open up a site or two more, but we keep evaluating that every day," said Brockman. 

Monday, June 29 marked the beginning of the New Braunfels' citywide ordinance for face masks, requiring the use of face coverings within the city limits for anyone over the age of 10 when in public. 

Brockman says it's crucial for everyone in the city to follow the order and do their part to help curb the spread of COVID-19. 

"At this point, what we are being advised from our medical doctors and health office is that if everybody wears a mask, even though you may not want to, it's only for a short time," said Brockman. "It's just the right thing to do for this period of time because we have a lot to lose, and some of that is losing someone's life, and I couldn't think of a worse thing to happen. We're asking our community to be part of the answer." 

The face mask order in New Braunfels is set to last until August 1, but the mayor is hopeful that if enough members of the community are vigilant, the city could possibly lift the order before that date. 

"If we can do this for a couple of weeks and see this number begin dropping, we certainly will remove that order that goes to August 1 sooner because that's our goal," Brockman said.