![]() The parts of the state struggling the most include major cities, especially the Houston metropolitan area, and counties in South and Central Texas and along the Gulf Coast. ![]() David Persse, Houston’s top public health official, said. “We’re building this car as we’re driving it down the freeway,” Dr. With hospital morgues overflowing, several counties have requested the same kind of refrigerated trucks that, months ago, lined the streets of New York City. Doctors are worried about shortages of an antiviral drug, remdesivir, that seems to reduce the recovery time for hospitalized Covid-19 patients. Hospital capacity is under strain in some parts of the state, including the hard-hit Rio Grande Valley. There have been more than 285,000 new cases reported since Memorial Day over 4,000 Texans have died from the virus. The number of daily new reported cases is climbing: As of July 22, the state averaged 329 new cases per million residents over the past 14 days, compared to just 37 per million in New York. On June 20, three weeks after Memorial Day, Texas saw over 4,400 new cases in a single day.Ī month later, Texas, along with Arizona and Florida, has become a cautionary tale. It soon became clear that transmission had reached alarming levels. If you just take your eyes off the ball for just a moment, that’s when it overwhelms the community.” “But then you started seeing images of people, especially young people, at parties and in pools and not respecting the fact that we were in the midst of a pandemic. We did feel like we had made progress,” he said. “Early on, we fought this virus successfully. But the fatigue of the shutdown combined with inconsistent public health messaging at a federal, state, and local level had made people complacent, Umair Shah, executive director of the Harris County health department, said. They urged Texans to remain vigilant about practicing social distancing and wearing masks for their benefit and that of their neighbors. The weekend crowds left public health officials uneasy. City authorities there received more than 200 complaints about social distancing violations in a matter of days. Partygoers crammed into a swimming pool at one club in Houston. ![]() Memorial Day weekend didn’t bode any better: Bars in Austin blew past their 25 percent capacity limits maskless patrons stood shoulder to shoulder. And it hadn’t achieved a two-week decline in cases, one of the key benchmarks states were supposed to hit before reopening. Because Texas had imposed one of the shortest lockdowns nationwide, it hadn’t had much time to suppress cases and build up testing capacity. Face masks were only encouraged - not required - in public places where maintaining physical distance from others wasn’t possible. Greg Abbott, a Republican, had allowed bars, restaurants, gyms, retailers, salons, and child care centers to reopen and sports to resume while capping capacity levels for most businesses.īut the warning signs were there, and some experts were already worried. ![]() Confirmed cases of Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, had been increasing only slightly for three months. It had been just over three weeks since Texas became one of the first states in the country to begin a phased reopening. On Memorial Day weekend, the mood in Texas was optimistic.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |