Another Austin Lockdown Coming?

Right now it’s answer cloudy, ask again later:

Austin commerce is on the brink.

Worrying trends in the community spread of the Covid-19 virus may prompt further action to shut down commercial activity or beef up enforcement measures against reported health and safety violations. It’s a critical decision for businesses that may have to quickly shut down, scale back or alter their operations on the fly once again.

Local public health and government officials have repeatedly stressed that they want to prevent the seven-day average of new Covid-19 hospitalizations from topping 70 per day. That threshold could put the area back to “Stage 5,” when only essential businesses should be open.

“We have not made the determination to enter Stage 5 yet,” interim Austin-Travis County Health Authority Mark Escott told county commissioners during a July 7 briefing.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler said that 69 new hospital admissions on July 6 puts the area on the edge of the “trigger place for us” — that seven-day moving average reaching 70 hospitalizations per day.

Under the city’s updated risk-based guidelines, what matters is the region’s trajectory on hospitalization rates as it passes that benchmark.

“If we went screaming into 70, then we need to pull back or we would overwhelm the hospitals,” Adler said on a July 6 Facebook Live broadcast. “If we were able to slow down the trajectory, then we have more space.”

“One of the things we’re going to have to make a determination on this week is just how rapidly we’re moving,” he added.

Escott said the entry to Stage 5 could happen at 70 hospitalizations per day all the way up to 123 hospitalizations per day “depending upon the trajectory of the curve.”

“This is the piece that we’re waiting on an update on from UT tomorrow,” Escott said, referring to the University of Texas at Austin.

Statewide, assuming the data is accurate, there appears to be a significant jump in Wuhan coronavirus fatalities over the last two days. Unfortunately, Travis County’s tracking dashboard doesn’t track day-by-day fatalities.

Governor Greg Abbott has indicated that he will not allow another shelter-in-place order, but given how quickly he’s caved on a host of other coronavirus measures, who knows?

Stay tuned…

Update: Not yet.

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3 Responses to “Another Austin Lockdown Coming?”

  1. Howard says:

    All this talk about silencing or recalling governor Abbott … what do people think the alternative is?

    The alternative to Abbott isn’t someone more conservative, it’s someone like Wendy Davis. Maybe not immediately, but next election time, after an Abbott recall or censure, that’s what we’ll get.

  2. martywd says:

    I think the TMA COVID-19 Task Force is going to have a lot to answer for regarding their hard anti Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine stance taken back in June which still stands according to what I can find at their website today? And apparently Abbott hangs on the hard-left TMA’s every utterance, so I’m not optimistic about what comes next regarding further panic. Abbott has been a huge disappoint. I now regret sending him a re-elect contribution a few months back.

  3. jabrwok says:

    Just heard about the pseudo-mandatory mask order. Most of the people I saw at the local grocery store were wearing masks, though there were a few hold-outs (yours truly included). It’s really getting irritating. The only numbers I’m seeing are for “hospital admissions”, not fatality rates, and no reference to any expanded testing, so I don’t know how seriously to take any numbers I’m seeing. Have we flattened the curve yet? Do we have to cover up more and more until there’s a “cure”? What the heck are we waiting for?

    Getting very tired of all this crap.

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