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Austin preps field hospital, changes test strategy, must get ready for 'at least a year' of COVID, Escott says

As COVID-19 cases surge in Austin, related hospital bed use has surged as well.
Austin's surge in COVID-19 cases, which threatens to overwhelm the area health care system by mid-July, may force a second shutdown, Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott told the City Council at a special called meeting Monday.
Since June 1, Travis County's average number of daily new COVID-19 cases has increased 372%, from around 60 at the start of the month to around 400 today. The average number of new daily hospital admissions has also skyrocketed in that period, increasing 400% from around 10 to 52.
"We are at the verge of having that recommendation coming from me to the mayor and Judge Biscoe about shutting down again," he said.
Hospital capacity
While there is currently enough hospital capacity to meet demand, that is likely to change in the next few weeks barring any substantial developments, Dr. Escott said. Already, he is hearing from area hospitals that they are hitting their ICU bed capacity and having to transfer patients to other facilities with more space.
To this end, APH is preparing an alternate care site for overflow patients. Although the city has not named its location, a local physician indicated during a press conference last week that it is the Austin Convention Center.
Beyond bed capacity, another concern is adequate staffing. "The beds and the space are not going to be the issue," Dr. Escott said. "It's the people that provide care to those beds are going to be the issue."
Shifting strategy
As a result of this surge, APH has shifted its strategy to maximize its resources and plan for "at least a year" of further pandemic response, Dr. Escott said.
Due to limited tests—as well as limitations on how quickly those tests can be processed by labs—APH has decided to stop testing asymptomatic residents, a practice it began on June 5 following mass protests.
APH will prioritize its testing and contact tracing efforts for symptomatic patients who have been tested recently, people living in congregate settings, workers involved in critical infrastructure and other vulnerable populations.
The department is also looking to shift its testing operation to private companies and contractors, so that it can direct public resources where they are most needed.
Local measures to slow the spread
Travis County Parks will close all parks in its system starting Thur, July 2, 2020 at 8 p.m. and re-open on Tue, Ju… https://t.co/T0JUeKbTDO— Travis County Parks (@Travis County Parks) 1593455358.0
Travis County Judge Sam Biscoe sent a letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday asking the state to enforce mandatory masking, prohibit social gatherings of more than 10 people, roll back business occupancy to 25% and allow local officials to issue stay-home orders as needed.
"Our numbers of confirmed positives and the lag time between the test results have outstripped both our ability to contact trace and the utility in contact tracing," he wrote. "In summary, the rapid increase in cases has outstripped our ability to track, measure, and mitigate the spread of disease.
Travis County Parks announced Monday that it will close all of its parks, including boat ramps, on Thursday evening through the Fourth of July weekend.
So far the city has not followed suit. When council members asked Dr. Escott whether they should do so, he said he is concerned that it would lead to people gathering elsewhere.
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Popular
(Pexels)
If you are a committed, grunge-wearing resident of the Pacific Northwest, it is easy–almost automatic–to look at Texas as an extraordinarily dry, hot and culturally oppressive place that is better to avoid, especially in the summer. Our two granddaughters live with their parents in Portland.
Recently we decided to take the older girl, who is 15, to Dallas. Setting aside the summer heat, a Portlander can adjust to the vibes of Austin without effort. So let’s take Texas with all of its excesses straight up. Dallas, here we come.
Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.
(Tesla)
Giga Texas, the massive Tesla factory in southeast Travis County is getting even bigger.
The company filed with the city of Austin this week to expand its headquarters with a new 500,000-square-foot building. The permit application notes “GA 2 and 3 expansion,” which indicates the company will make two general assembly lines in the building.
More details about the plans for the building are unclear. The gigafactory has been focused on Model Y production since it opened in April, but the company is also aiming for Cybertruck production to kick off in mid-2023.
While there is room for expansion on the 3.3 square miles of land Tesla has, this move comes after CEO Elon Musk’s recent comments about the state of the economy and its impact on Tesla.
In a May interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, Musk said the gigafactories in Berlin and Austin are “gigantic money furnaces” and said Giga Texas had manufactured only a small number of cars.
And in June, Musk sent a company wide email saying Tesla will be reducing salaried headcount by 10%, then later tweeted salaried headcount should be fairly flat.
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