Sunday, 28 June 2020

With cases of the coronavirus surging to record levels in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott recommended Tuesday that Texans stay home as much as possible and for the first time moved to allow the tightening of two kinds of restrictions that had been eased under his reopening plan.

"We want to make sure that everyone reinforces the best safe practices of wearing a mask, hand sanitization, maintaining safe distance, but importantly, because the spread is so rampant right now, there’s never a reason for you to have to leave your home," Abbott said during an early-afternoon interview with KBTX-TV in Bryan. "Unless you do need to go out, the safest place for you is at your home."

Within hours, Abbott made two announcements to alter the reopening process. He scaled back a previous statewide order and gave local officials the ability to place restrictions on outdoor gatherings of over 100 people, a threshold he originally set at 500 people. And Abbott said the state would enact mandatory health standards for child care centers after prior rules became voluntary earlier this month.

The moves came a day after Abbott said at a news conference that the coronavirus was spreading at an "unacceptable rate" but did not offer any new policies to stem the virus' spread. Instead, he reiterated long-established guidelines such as social distancing and pointed out that the state was increasingly cracking down on businesses that allow large crowds. At the news conference, Abbott also encouraged Texans to stay home, albeit in less explicit terms than he did in the KBTX interview.

The Monday news conference marked a newly urgent tone by Abbott, which he continued on Tuesday. During TV interviews in the noon hour, he made the somewhat unusual move of getting ahead of the state's daily announcement of new coronavirus cases, bracing audiences for a new record high exceeding 5,000 — a big increase over the last peak of 4,430 on Saturday.

Before sharing the new record figure with KBTX, Abbott said he was trying to "make sure people around the state really comprehend the magnitude of the challenge we’re dealing with."

By the end of the afternoon, the state Department of State Health Services had reported the precise number: 5,489 new cases.

At the same time, two metrics that Abbott has prioritized — hospitalization levels and positivity rate — continued to trend in the wrong direction. Hospitalizations reached 4,092, marking the 12th straight day of a new peak. The positivity rate — or the ratio of cases to tests, presented by the state as a seven-day average — reached 9.76%, back to the level it was at in mid-April.

Coronavirus patients crowd some Texas ICUs as Gov. Greg Abbott touts "abundant" hospital capacity

Tech Views June 23, 2020 News No comments

As the number of patients hospitalized with the coronavirus has reached record highs 12 days in a row, Gov. Greg Abbott and other health officials have stressed that the state has an “abundant” capacity to care for them.

Statewide, there were 14,260 available hospital beds and nearly 1,500 intensive care unit beds as of Tuesday.

But regionally, some hospital officials are reporting that intensive care units — for seriously ill patients, like those on ventilators — are near or over capacity, and local leaders have warned that hospitals could get overwhelmed if the number of infections keeps climbing.

In the hard-hit Houston region, hospitals have begun moving coronavirus patients from crowded ICUs to other facilities. A local children’s hospital said this week it is admitting transfer patients, with and without the virus, to help other facilities manage their capacity.

The governor struck a newly urgent tone Monday in a televised press conference to say COVID-19 was “spreading at an unacceptable rate” and that multiple metrics to gauge the virus’ spread and severity had significantly increased. Epidemiologists have attributed upticks in infections and hospitalizations to changes in behavior, including lax mask use and less social distancing.

Abbott spokesperson John Wittman said hospitals in Houston and Austin have been “emphatic” that beds will be available for coronavirus patients. He also said the governor has made clear that “he will utilize tools as necessary to ensure hospitals will provide beds for anyone who tests positive for COVID-19.”

Sunday, 28 June 2020

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Gov. Greg Abbott recommends Texans stay home as coronavirus cases surge

Coronavirus patients crowd some Texas ICUs as Gov. Greg Abbott touts "abundant" hospital capacity

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