Residents in Houston Reported Waiting for Hours to Test for Covid-19
Texas is fast becoming the new center of America’s coronavirus pandemic.
It became clear that Texas Governor Greg Abbott was in retreat when he closed the bars.
Ever since restarting the Lone Star state’s economy in early May, Abbott ignored the pleas of mayors and county leaders to impose strict rules to stop Covid-19. The 62-year-old Republican appeared repeatedly on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show to tout his commitment to keeping business open, while the pandemic quietly gathered strength.
During the past week, Texas saw record case numbers, and hospitals in Houston, its biggest city, neared their limits. Even then, Abbott agreed only to pause the reopening. He didn’t order people to wear masks or stop going out.
But Friday, he shut the saloons at high noon.
Abbott’s reversal underscored a crisis that was weeks in the making and driven by four distinct causes: the failure of public-health work like contact tracing, heavy economic pressure, the political neutering of its cities, and Abbott’s solidarity with President Donald Trump’s agenda. Every week of free commerce allowed more Texans to fall ill.
Now, the second-most-populous state faces the prospect of mortality like that seen in New York three months ago. Texas is fast becoming the new center of the pandemic in the U.S. The nation on Saturday saw total cases jump 1.9%, the biggest percentage increase in six weeks, with more than 45,000 new infections.
On Friday, the top official in Harris County, which includes Houston, declared an emergency, and thousands of cell phones buzzed with warnings to shelter in place. “Today, we find ourselves careening toward a catastrophic and unsustainable situation,” Lina Hidalgo said during a media briefing. “There is a severe and uncontrolled outbreak of Covid-19. Our hospitals are using 100% of their base capacity now, and are having to start relying on surge capacity.”
The counties around Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio all saw their case numbers at least triple since the reopening began, although none started with as many as Harris. Across Texas, the rate of positive Covid-19 tests has risen to 17.5%, far above the 10% threshold that’s considered concerning, according to data presented by the White House virus task force on Friday. The same day, the Texas state health department put the rate at 13.2%, and on Saturday that climbed to a record 14.31%. That was almost tripled the May 31 figure of 5.4%.
What’s happening in Texas “can happen anywhere,” said David Lakey, vice chancellor for health affairs and chief medical officer for the University of Texas system. “The vast majority of people still have never been infected with it, and so are virologically naïve to it,” said Lakey, a former commissioner of Texas’ health department. “So it should not surprise us that given the right circumstances, that it will infect many more people.”
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis said the state reopened too fast, while the virus was still spreading, and that the governor hobbled local efforts to control it.
“If ever there was a time when I wished my predictions about what would happen were wrong, this was it,” Ellis said. “The sentiment on the ground here is that we are scared to death.”
Abbott’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2TwO8Gm
QUICKTAKE ON SOCIAL:
Follow QuickTake on Twitter: twitter.com/quicktake
Like QuickTake on Facebook: facebook.com/quicktake
Follow QuickTake on Instagram: instagram.com/quicktake
Subscribe to our newsletter: https://bit.ly/2FJ0oQZ
Email us at [email protected]
QuickTake by Bloomberg is a global news network delivering up-to-the-minute analysis on the biggest news, trends and ideas for a new generation of leaders.
source