Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has issued an executive order closing bars and some outdoor recreation businesses once again as part of the state’s effort to “contain the spread of Covid-19.”
Abbott announced the decision in a statement Friday morning amid rising cases in the state.
“As I said from the start, if the positivity rate rose above 10%, the State of Texas would take further action to mitigate the spread of Covid-19,” Abbott said. “At this time, it is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars,” he added.
“The actions in this executive order are essential to our mission to swiftly contain this virus and protect public health. We want this to be as limited in duration as possible. However, we can only slow the spread if everyone in Texas does their part.”
Texas is among at least 11 states seeing a 50% increase or more in cases compared to the previous week.
Here is what the order includes:
All bars that get more than 51% of their gross receipts from the sale of alcoholic beverages are required to close at 12:00 p.m. today.
These businesses may remain open for delivery and take-out, including for alcoholic beverages, as authorized by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. Restaurants can remain open for dine-in service, but their capacities can not exceed 50% of total listed indoor occupancy, beginning on Monday.
Outdoor gatherings of 100 or more people must be approved by local governments, with certain exceptions.
The renewed lockdown is a sign of just how quickly the situation in Texas has gone from seemingly manageable to virtually out of control. Texas has reported more than 5,400 new cases of the coronavirus on each of the last three days, setting successively higher one-day records.
Cases are rising particularly fast in the state’s four largest cities. Houston and its surrounding counties have already hit peak hospital capacity, local officials said. Medical centers in the Houston area are using additional bed space they prepared over the last several months.
“The hospitals are beginning to go into their surge capacity. Those surge beds, the majority of them are not designed to be long term,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo (D) told The Hill on Thursday. “The concern is these trends we’re looking at to project out, they show we would run out of all beds, including surge beds within the next 10 to 40 days, and every day [that range] gets shorter.”
The projections are similarly grim in Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, though those cities are a few days behind Houston in case growth. Dallas and neighboring Tarrant County have reported about 28,000 cases; San Antonio has 7,800 cases and there are almost 7,000 cases in the Austin area, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.
“Everything we can do, we’re doing,” Hidalgo said. “But it’s just not enough.”
