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Travis County residents are taking advantage of Austin Public Health's free COVID-19 testing service as reported cases continue to spike—even though they may have to wait in a long car line before reaching the drive-thru station.
Between June 8 and June 15, APH conducted nearly 2,500 tests—more than double its previous weekly count, Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott said this week.
Wednesday evening, Travis County reported its largest daily increase—220—in confirmed COVID-19 cases since the pandemic started. The previous record was 161 new cases reported on June 9. (Due to maintenance on the Travis County COVID-19 dashboard, Wednesday is the most recent data available.)
But Dr. Escott has explained that the spike is not merely reflective of increased testing but also of the virus' quickening spread.
"We have widespread community transmission in Austin, in Travis County, across Texas, across the United States," he said. "And we're seeing that demonstrated in the new cases that we're experiencing and the rapid growth of those new cases."
A key indicator of a surge is an increasing rate of hospitalizations. The seven-day rolling average of new daily hospital admissions as of Wednesday was 24.3, up from 13 a week ago.
This change led APH to advance the local threat level from stage 3 to 4, according to the five-stage system its staff developed with the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas.
Although the number of confirmed cases and COVID-related hospitalizations are rising, the rate of positive test results has largely remained steady, APH data shows. Between late April and early June, the positive rate was 5.83%. Since June 8, 5.72% of tests have returned a positive result. This positive rate, however, varies widely across race and ethnic groups. Dr. Escott said Wednesday that the positive rate for Hispanic residents tested by APH between June 8-15 was 23.5%. The rate among black residents was 7% and among white residents 3.1%.
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A $6,000 cockatoo named Lemon Grab was stolen from a pet store Sunday afternoon, owner Kelsey Fernandez said. (Kelsey Fernandez)
A big-money bird has been stolen from a northwest Austin pet store.
Kelsey Fernandez, the owner of a $6,000 sulphur and citron-crested cockatoo named Lemon Grab, said the emotional support animal was taken from the Gallery of Pets store, around closing time on Sunday.
"I've struggled with mental illness my entire life, and ever since I got him I've been doing so much better," Fernandez told Austonia.
The $6k cockatoo is young and will starve unless he is fed by hand, Fernandez said.
In a surveillance video, a man appears to have something under his shirt as he and two others exit the business around the same time the store believes that Lemon Grab was stolen.
Fernandez said a report has been filed with the Austin Police Department with an $1,000 reward for his return.
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(Pexels)
Introverts and personal space lovers may not want to make the move to Austin anytime soon: The Texas capital saw a bigger increase in one-bedroom rent prices than almost any other U.S. city in April, according to a Rent.com report.
Austin's one-bedroom rent has more than doubled—a 112% increase—from April 2021 to 2022, the report said. Only Oklahoma City saw a higher year-over-year increase with a 133% jump.
Austin also had the fourth-highest increase in two-bedroom rent, with a 50% increase in the past year. The city joined a nationwide trend where rents were up 8.3% year-over-year across the U.S, a trend exacerbated by a 6.2% increase in inflation in the same time period.
But "not everyone is experiencing inflation the same way," Redfin Deputy Chief Economist Taylor Marr said in the report, and a brunt of the load has gone to cities with more move-ins. While over 90% of state rental markets increased in the last year, that jump was seen most in Sun Belt states, including Texas, Arizona and Florida.
Even with breakneck increases in rent, however, Austin's rent prices still haven't cracked the top 10: the city's one-bedroom apartments are the 12th most expensive in the nation with an average price of $2,918. Meanwhile, its two-bedrooms fall behind Texas cities Frisco, Dallas and Plano and come out 34th on the list with a $2,302 average monthly rent.
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