In a press conference on Thursday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that most regions across Texas will be able to loosen their COVID-19 restrictions as soon as Monday. Chief among these changes is that restaurants and other businesses, such as retail stores, offices, gyms, and manufacturers, will be able to expand their capacity to 75%, up from the 50% capacity at which they've been operating.
Hospitals will also be permitted to begin offering elective procedures again, depending on hospital capacity and COVID-19 numbers in each hospital region. Abbott excluded three hospital regions, including Victoria, Rio Grande Valley, and Laredo, claiming that the hospitalization numbers in these regions are too high to allow for resources to be diverted away from COVID-19.
This was Abbott's first public announcement about the reopening of Texas since he scaled back restaurant capacity and closed bars in late June. Notably missing from this announcement was the reopening of bars, which Abbott cited as "nationally recognized COVID spreading locations."
Abbott cited downward trending data from the state health department as a primary reason for loosening restrictions accross the state. The state's seven-day daily average of new COVID-19 cases as reported on Wednesday was 3,145, a decline from July numbers but still well above the seven day averages reported in April, May, and June. Additionally, Texas health officials recently announced a change in the way that they are calculating numbers such as positivity rate, after conceding that their previous method of calculation was flawed.
Abbott claimed that further reopenings, such as the reopening of bars, would continue to depend on state health data, particularly on hospitalization numbers in each region of the state.
Written by Sam Cedar, KWBU