‘TIME TO OPEN’: Abbott lifts COVID orders, urges ‘personal responsibility’
Gov. Greg Abbott announced Tuesday he is lifting the state’s coronavirus restrictions, as vaccinations rise and severe infections from the pandemic decline.
“Too many small business owners have struggled to pay their bills,” he said, sounding celebratory. “This must end. It is now time to open Texas 100 percent.”
The rollback will begin next Wednesday, with businesses across the state able to open at full capacity. Abbott’s statewide mask mandate is also being lifted. Both measures quickly drew concerns from the public health community.
Under the changes, local officials can impose limited restrictions again if their hospitalizations from COVID-19 rise above 15 percent
for at least a week. Businesses will also be able to require their own safety standards for employees and customers. The Texas Education Agency said it will update its guidance to schools later this week.
Speaking to business leaders at a packed restaurant in Lubbock, the Republican governor cautioned Texans to continue following recommended guidelines, including distancing and wearing face coverings. Few of the attendees appeared to be following either recommendation.
“This does not remove personal responsibility,” Abbott said. “Personal vigilance is still needed to contain COVID. It’s just that now, state mandates are no longer needed.”
The announcement comes as Abbott is under new scrutiny from statewide power outages last month, which contributed to dozens of deaths and left millions of Texans without power or water for days. Local officials are still waiting to see whether the blackouts, which forced many households to shelter with friends and family, could lead to new coronavirus outbreaks.
The move also follows rollbacks in several other states, with vaccine doses becoming more widely available. Nearly 20 percent of the nation’s adults have received at least one shot, and 10 percent have been fully vaccinated 2½ months into the nationwide campaign, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Texas, more than 3.5 million people have received at least one dose, and nearly 2 million have been fully vaccinated, out of a population of 29 million. The state ranks among the lowest for the percentage of people vaccinated, at 13 percent. Hospitalizations from the disease have meanwhile fallen by more than half from their high over 14,000 in January.
Republican state leaders including House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, welcomed the rollback.
“Today’s action marks an important step in the reopening of Texas, improving the mental health of our students, increasing the reporting of domestic violence and child abuse, and revitalizing our business climate,” Phelan said in a statement.
Faster vaccine shipments
Over the weekend, Johnson & Johnson shipped out nearly 4 million doses of its newly authorized, one-shot COVID-19 vaccine to be delivered to states including Texas for use starting Tuesday. The company will deliver about 16 million more doses by the end of March and a total of 100 million by the end of June.
That adds to the supply being distributed by Pfizer and Moderna and should help the nation amass enough doses by midsummer to vaccinate all adults. The White House is encouraging Americans to take the first dose available to them, regardless of manufacturer.
But the efforts come with strong warnings from health officials against reopening too quickly, as worrisome coronavirus variants spread. Young adults, who have been major drivers in past outbreaks, are not expected to be eligible for the vaccine for months, and many Texas teachers who have been ordered to return to the classroom are similarly not yet allowed to receive it.
Earlier this week, Houston was the first city to record every major variant of the novel coronavirus — many of which are more contagious than the original strain.
“Why now, at this stage, would we take away the requirement to wear a mask?” said Rebecca Fischer, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at Texas A&M. “We know that aerosol droplets are the primary way this virus spreads, and that it spreads like wildfire. Masks are one of the only tools we have to prevent that.”
On Monday, the head of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, warned state officials and ordinary Americans not to let down their guard, saying she is “really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures that we have recommended.”
“I remain deeply concerned about a potential shift in the trajectory of the pandemic,” she said. “We stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground that we have gained.”
Democrats take aim at Abbott
Frustrated Democrats accused the governor of risking lives for political points with conservatives, some of whom have been critical of his previous emergency orders. More than 43,000 coronavirus deaths have been recorded in Texas.
“There’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said during a news conference streamed by KHOU. “But we’re not quite there yet. We’re far, way off from that. This is not the time to give up. This is not the time to promote more infections, more hospitalizations, to promote more deaths for the sake of political expediency.” She says Abbott's announcement was timed to pull pressure off the investigation into the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas and the state’s failed power grid that left millions of Texans in the cold.
“This sure is a good story to distract from (the power outage scandal),” Hidalgo said. “You’re putting the health of my community at risk.”
Mayor Sylvester Turner agreed. “The people who are vulnerable to this virus, get this virus and end up in the hospital and end up dying, those are the ones I'm speaking for,” he said. “He's the governor. But even the governor should be held accountable, and he should be called out when he makes the wrong decision.”
Some medical employees were also disheartened. Dr. Matt Dacso, an internist at the University of Texas Medical Branch, said the order was a huge hit to morale, coming almost exactly a year after the first recorded case in New York. His team had been celebrating the progress made since then — until they heard about Abbott’s latest move.
“I had a pretty strong visceral reaction — like PTSD,” Dacso said. “I can think of no other word but incomprehensible ... Everybody is hurting, but gosh, man. The masks were doing a lot for us.”