Texas reaches 12,000 daily virus cases
Governor blames jump on lax rules enforcement
AUSTIN, Texas — As Texas shattered a single-day record with 12,000 new coronavirus cases reported, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday ruled out another lockdown and accused local leaders of not enforcing existing restrictions.
His rejection of a shutdown comes as other governors across the U.S. take aggressive new steps to curb record-shattering spikes in COVID-19 cases that are pushing hospitals to the limit.
Texas is on the verge of surpassing 8,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients for the first time since a deadly summer outbreak.
During a visit to hard-hit Lubbock, where the local health authority says the fire department is building shelves for the dead as morgues run short on space, Abbott made clear Texas will not retreat to lockdown measures again.
“It is important for everybody in the state to know that, statewide, we’re not going to have another shutdown,” Abbott said. “There’s an overestimation of exactly what a shutdown will achieve.”
He focused instead on the arrival of a new antibody drug similar to a treatment President Donald Trump received after contracting the virus last month.
But supply of the drug, called bamlanivimab, is scarce.
The largest hospital in the Rio Grande Valley, DHR Health, had 38 doses that it could begin administering soon as Friday, said Dr. Sohail Rao.
The therapy is only approved for people 12 and older with mild or moderate COVID-19 not requiring hospitalization, and who are at higher risk of severe illness from the virus, including people who are diabetic or obese. Texas received about 5,700 vials of the drug, second only to Illinois.
“We are quite enthusiastic that we have this antibody,” Rao said. “But what will be a limiting factor is the number of doses released by the state, which also depends on how much they get from the federal government.”
In closing the door on more shutdowns, Abbott said the virus is spreading in social settings beyond businesses.
He also singled out El Paso — where
Texas has rushed more than 1,200 additional medical personnel, and 10 mobile morgues are in place to handle the dead — suggesting county leaders on the border aren’t enforcing existing restrictions as they try shutting down gyms and tattoo parlors.
In other developments:
■ The day after he announced that New York City schools would close to in-person learning, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that other businesses will likely shut down within a week or two, as well, to curb the spread of the coronavirus. De Blasio noted that Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, has indicated that all of New York City could be declared an orange zone under the state’s guidelines, which would trigger the shutdown of gyms, as well as indoor service at bars and restaurants.
■ Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said Thursday that a new order coming next week will lift the requirement to limit social gatherings to people in an immediate household. Herbert also said he would maintain the state’s mask mandate.
■ In response to rising COVID-19 infection numbers, the Smithsonian Institution is indefinitely shutting down operations at all its facilities, effective Monday and affecting seven museums, plus the National Zoo.