Not playing ball with virus
Hidalgo won’t lower threat level despite improved metrics
According to Harris County’s COVID-19 guidance, residents should avoid all unnecessary contact with others. They should not go to bars or barbecues or ballgames. They should work from home if possible and leave only for errands, such as groceries or medicine.
Hardly any of the county’s 4.8 million residents appear to be following this advice now. Gov. Greg Abbott fully reopened Texas last month and nixed the mask mandate. Youth sports have resumed, houses of worship again welcome in-person parishioners and 21,765 fans attended the Astros home opener at Minute Maid Park.
Yet, for 42 consecutive weeks, Harris County has been at its highest COVID-19 threat level, red, even though the virus metrics here have improved significantly since January and other counties have relaxed their guidance for residents. Though local officials have no authority to issue COVID-19 restrictions, Harris appears to be the only of Texas’s 254 counties to still urge residents to remain at home.
The county’s two Republican commissioners, Jack Cagle and Tom Ramsey, this week urged Democratic County Judge Lina Hidalgo to reconsider the threat-level criteria. The pair also have resumed attending court meetings in person, which they say can be done safely, while the three Democrats join virtually and require members of the public to do so, as well.
Ramsey noted school districts in his western precinct, including Spring Branch and Tomball ISDs, have reopened successfully.
Districts serving students in Harris County have documented roughly 29,000, student and staff cases of COVID-19 since schools reopened, though local health officials have said they believe virus transmission is low
on campuses properly following safety protocols.
“According to Code Red, they shouldn’t be going to school; we shouldn’t be going to church,” Ramsey said Tuesday. “I don’t think the Code Red matches the reality of where we are, and maybe there’s a better way to communicate with our residents in terms of where we are and what they need to do.”
Cagle said that while the virus still poses a risk, the continuous red level obscures the progress Harris County has made and leaves officials with no clear way of informing residents if the metrics do get worse again.
“Folks are becoming blind to the color red,” Cagle said. “It doesn’t mean anything anymore, in terms of their daily lives.”
Hitting a plateau
Hidalgo will not budge. She said she has let advice from doctors and epidemiologists dictate her strategy since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, and will stick with that approach. She noted that less than 20 percent of Harris County residents have been vaccinated, and said new outbreaks in states such as South Dakota and Michigan offer a warning for Texas.
“I really hope I’m wrong. I really do,” Hidalgo said. “It’s the kind of thing you really can’t win. If you’re right, people end up in the hospital or dead. If you’re wrong, then you just look like you cried wolf. I would rather follow the advice of these folks that keep looking at it, that are not political at all.”
Hidalgo, who acknowledged many in the public have resumed normal lives, has tried to lead by example. She declined to join other politicians at last summer’s George Floyd march in downtown Houston over social distancing concerns and celebrated New Year’s Eve at her apartment.
Since moving to level red last June, Harris County never has met all of the criteria to move to the second-highest level, orange, including 14-day averages of: a positivity rate below 5 percent, daily new cases below 400 and COVID-19 patients occupying less than 15 percent of hospital ICU capacity. As of Wednesday, those metrics stood at 8.7 percent, 434 and 15.1 percent.
The glass-half-full view of these numbers is that each has declined significantly from January’s post-holiday spike. Both the number of COVID-19 patients occupying ICU beds and positivity rate have dropped by more than half, and the daily new case average is down 83 percent.
The more cautious approach, which Hidalgo favors, takes into consideration that the governor fully reopened the state over the objection of one of his medical advisers, herd immunity is still months away and the presence of several virus variants in Houston is a wild card.
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, a professor at the UT Health Science Center who spoke with commissioners at Hidalgo’s request, said the improving metrics have reached a plateau, which could be a sign of trouble.
“This means that there continues to be active spread in the community and also, coupled with variant spread, this really is an unfavorable position for an outbreak,” Jetelina said.
Hidalgo and Mayor Sylvester Turner were sharply critical of Abbott for fully reopening Texas and ending mandatory mask usage in early March, which they suggested was motivated by the governor’s desire to distract from February’s blackout crisis.
’Keep the faith’
Hidalgo noted that Texas suffered COVID-19 surges after the governor’s attempts at partial reopenings this past spring and fall, and warned hospitalizations would raise again.
So far this time, however, the local Democrats’ fears have not materialized. Statewide, the daily average of new cases and deaths has plummeted. The positivity rate dropped below 6 percent on Monday, the lowest in a year.
That has convinced other Texas cities and counties to lower their risk levels. On Tuesday, Fort Bend downgraded to its thirdhighest threat level, yellow. Unlike Harris County, it does not use positivity rate as a criterion.
Dallas went from red to orange on March 24. Austin downgraded to its version of yellow on March 13, citing an increase in vaccinations. San Antonio rates the COVID-19 risk for residents as “low,” the least severe rating on its scale.
Hidalgo still has the backing of the two Democratic commissioners, Adrian Garcia and Rodney Ellis. Garcia said he is particularly troubled that unvaccinated younger people continue to get sick.
“Keep the faith,” Ellis said to Hidalgo at Tuesday’s court session. “Follow the science and not the politics.”