TYLER, Texas — The rise in COVID-19 cases across the state brought a change in tone from Governor Greg Abbott Monday.
Gov. Abbott (R-Texas) used an afternoon news conference to plead with Texans to wear masks and made a rare show of wearing one, himself.
“To state the obvious,” he said, “COVID-19 is now spreading at an unacceptable rate in Texas and it must be corralled.”
Gov. Abbott presented three charts to show how the spread of coronavirus is getting worse in Texas. One showed a rise in the number of new cases reported per day, one showed the percentage of tests that come back positive, and the other showed the number of patients with confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the hospital. All of them have spiked in the weeks since Memorial Day, though a combination of factors is likely to blame.
Gov. Abbott urged Texans to do the things doctors have been asking of them for months: wash their hands, stay home if possible, and wear a mask if they go out. He acknowledged that he had not been so forceful about the use of face coverings in the past.
“I think people could understand that, if you look at these charts, it would have been one thing to talk about masks in the middle part of May when it looked like all the trends are going down,” he explained. “It’s a different thing talking about masks today in the middle part of June with all of the numbers going up.”
Gov. Abbott acknowledged that many people refuse to wear a mask either because of how it feels or because they think it impinges upon their freedoms. But he said that if they want the freedom of an open economy, one of the best ways to keep that is to wear masks. “This is not going to be a permanent assignment,” he added. “Hopefully it will be a temporary requirement, one that will get us to that next level when we have treatments that will respond to COVID-19.”
Gov. Abbott and public health officials have used available hospital space as one of their sticks when determining how to reopen the state. East Texas still has lots of available beds, ICU beds, and ventilators, but other parts of the state are running out. Austin Mayor Steve Adler wrote in an open letter, “On our current trajectory, we could reach a point in about four weeks where we have to choose between returning to sheltering at home or watching as our hospitals get overwhelmed and we suffer many preventable deaths.” The Texas Medical Center predicted that Houston-area hospitals would run out of ICU space in two weeks at the current pace. That is part of why Gov. Abbott said he counts on municipalities to create their own rules rather than impose them statewide.
“There is a differentiation about the level of spread in different parts of the state of Texas,” he explained. “What may be true in Austin, Texas is different in Austin County, in the state of Texas. And we need to have latitude for that differentiation.”
The numbers of new cases, patients in the hospital, and percentage of positive tests have all doubled in the last four weeks. If those figures double in the next four weeks, as well, Gov. Abbott said he would he would shut down parts of the economy once again, but he said he would prefer Texans follow the protocols so have does not have to take drastic action. “Closing down Texas again will always be the last option,” he stated.
Dr. John Hellerstedt, Commissioner of the Texas Department of Health Services, said that he believes wearing a mask is a way of showing Texans care about each other, since cloth face coverings protect others from the wearer, rather than protecting the wearer.
“We really are at a point where we need to recover what I feel is a sense of community that we had early on in the outbreak of COVID-19,” he stated. “We are still all in this together, Texas, and we need to act, not just to protect ourselves, but to protect the entire community.”
When asked by a reporter at the end of the news conference, Gov. Abbott said he thought it would be safe for Texas voters to participate in the July 14 Primary Runoff Election. He has not supported calls to expand vote-by-mail access, and said lengthening the early voting period, which begins next Monday, was a helpful solution.
“We believe that, if people will take the time to vote early, and when they do so, wear a mask, it really shouldn’t pose much of a problem with regard to being exposed to COVID-19,” he said.