■ Seminole will not mandate masks “at this time.”

Seminole County announced Friday that it will not require people to wear masks in public, as neighboring Orange County will start mandating on Saturday.

Rather, Seminole officials said they will launch a public education campaign called “Help Yourself, Help Your Neighbors” through billboards, public service announcements and social media that will stress the importance of wearing masks and practicing social distancing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

“There are a multitude of studies that show that wearing a mask may be the single most important thing we can do to eliminate the spread of the coronavirus,” said Alan Harris, Seminole’s emergency management director.

The county allowed an earlier mask order to expire June 4 as Gov. Ron DeSantis reopened more of the state’s economy, including bars. The previous order required employees and patrons of businesses to wear masks when they couldn’t keep at least 6 feet apart.

Seminole, along with Orange and other Florida counties, saw a sharp increase in the number of new infections this week. On some days, the increase has been more than tenfold than in previous days.

Still, officials said the best way to encourage people to wear a mask is to get the word out through public education rather than requiring them to do it. Seminole Commission Chairman Jay Zembower said Orange County’s order, which takes effect Saturday, lacks any significant penalties to be effective. Osceola County, just south of Orange, began requiring masks in April, but eliminated a potential criminal penalty for violations.

“I’m not a fan of enacting something that is not enforceable,” he said. “The reality is that there isn’t enough man power — police officers, Sheriff deputies — to enforce such an order.”

But some residents pushed back on that philosophy and urged the county to send a message with a mask requirement.

“We need to take the example of Orange County,” Seminole resident Bob Munnings wrote on the county’s Facebook page Friday in urging Seminole to require masks. “It hurts literally nobody, but keeps people safer.”

Also, Seminole officials cautioned residents over a dramatic surge of coronavirus cases posted on the county’s web site on Friday that showed 117 new infections on Thursday, or more than double the number from the previous day.

Harris explained that a state lab inadvertently “dumped [the results of ] 40-plus cases on us, all at the same time,” from the past three days on Thursday, rather than “trickling” them in over several days.

“I don’t want people to panic,” Harris said during a live Facebook chat Friday. “It was a compilation of three days before.”

That means the number of new cases reported each day this week should have been higher if the lab had reported them in a more typical time frame and Friday’s total would have been closer to 80 rather than 117. Seminole has had a record number of more than 40 cases for four of the past five days, including 53 listed for Wednesday, according to state data.

As of Friday, Seminole has had 14 deaths related to COVID-19 and 30 patients undergoing treatment in county hospitals. That’s an increase from last week, when there were just 15 people hospitalized.

County officials also said they were disappointed that a “pop-up” test site held Wednesday at Carillon Elementary School in Oviedo that drew more than 500 people did not attract more young adults to get free tests as they had hoped.

That test site was arranged earlier this week because the area between Oviedo and the University of Central Florida campus is considered a “hot spot” for coronavirus cases among individuals between the ages of 18 and 30 after a dramatic surge in new infections after bars were permitted by Gov. Ron DeSantis to reopen on June 5.

County officials said the rise in infections within that area is because many restaurants and bars that cater to young adults did not practice social distancing, and employees did not wear masks or facial coverings.

Hundreds of people waited in a line of cars more than a mile long along Lockwood Boulevard to get tested at Carillon. And county officials were forced to stop the testing after three hours because they ran out of tests.

“It did bring some [young adults], but not as many as we hoped,” Harris said.

Harris said the county will offer free tests every day next week at “pop up” test sites across the county because of the rising number of COVID-19 cases and more residents wanting to get tested.

“Definitely there is a demand, so we plan to offer more testing,” he said.