Austonia AM
100% Austin news, info, and entertainment, straight to your inbox at 6 a.m. every morning.
In five minutes, you're fully informed and ready to start another great day in our city.
×
(Austin Public Health)
The moving average of daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases has largely stayed steady in Travis County since late July.
Local health officials report a plateau in new confirmed COVID-19 cases and decreased demand for testing as schools prepare to reopen at limited capacity.
"We're concerned that we are not decreasing at the same rapid pace that we were toward the middle and end of July," Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott said Tuesday.
The seven-day moving average of daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases was 208, as of Monday evening, only slightly lower than the July 29 average of 213.
Last week Escott said Travis County appeared to be making progress, but that is no longer the case.
"We're having trouble pushing through this plateau," he said.
Decreased testing
With a deflated surge and reports of long wait times, Demand for Austin Public Health's free COVID testing service has plummeted. Although the department has the capacity to test up to a thousand people a day, only around 250 signed up for the service on Monday and 40 on Tuesday, Escott said.
As a result, APH is now offering testing to anyone who applies, regardless if the person is experiencing symptoms or has had known contact with the virus.
Despite the decreased demand for testing, APH is reporting decreasing positivity rates week-over-week. Currently, around 9% of tests conducted in Travis County are positive, down from a peak of 21.2% six weeks ago.
School-age children and young adults between the ages of 10 and 19 have had the highest or second highest positivity rates in Travis County over the last month. (Austin Public Health)
But there are some disparities within the testing data, including a much higher positivity rate among Latino residents and certain age groups. Residents between the ages of 10 and 19 have reported the highest or second-highest positivity rates over the last four weeks.
"This is our group that's going to school, going to college," Escott explained.
School plans
These trends are concerning because schools are scheduled to begin a phased reopening on Sept. 8, which will likely drive up transmission rates as students, teachers and staff commingle on campus.
Further decreases in new cases and hospitalizations would make reopenings safer, Escott said, and more likely to last, without the need for intermittent closures.
To this end, Austin Public Health released its interim guidance for schools last week, which recommends that campuses open at 25% capacity for at least the first few weeks, to gauge the risk and work out any kinks. Then, they should modulate capacity limits based on the local COVID risk assessment, using APH's guidelines.
The Austin-Travis County Health Authority adopted new emergency rules related to reopening schools. Austin Public H… https://t.co/Nfy69FHnKK— Austin Public Health (@Austin Public Health)1597444927.0
"I think the most important thing right now is that students have an avenue for education for the entirety of the fall semester, and anything that is going to put that at risk, such as trying to put too many teachers and students in one place, is really going to threaten that continuity," Escott said.
From Your Site Articles
- New COVID cases decline but more kids test positive, Austin health ... ›
- Austin Public Health to expand testing amid plateau - austonia ›
- Everything we know about COVID-19 in Austin right now - austonia ›
- New coronavirus cases plateau in Austin, after weeks of decline ... ›
- COVID-19 unmasks Austin’s long-standing health inequities—with Latinos bearing the brunt of the pandemic - austonia ›
- Long-hauler covid patients experience long-term covid-19 - austonia ›
- Everything we know about COVID-19 in Austin right now - austonia ›
- Everything we know about COVID-19 in Austin right now - austonia ›
- Everything we know about COVID-19 in Austin right now ›
- Everything we know about COVID-19 in Austin right now - austonia ›
- Austin officials say reopening roll back is the next 'logical step' - austonia ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Popular
Bruce McCandless II's untethered spacewalk made history in 1984. The red stripes above his knees were the only way that NASA could determine which astronaut was Bruce and which was his fellow spacewalker, Bob Stewart. (NASA)
'Wonders All Around' is a new book by Austinite Bruce McCandless III about his dad, the astronaut Bruce McCandless II. (Bruce McCandless III)
I met McCandless III, who lives in Austin with his wife Pati, for a coffee a few months ago, thanks to the introduction from a mutual friend. As we talked about losing our dads, being writers and parents and living in Austin while still dealing with COVID, his dad's famous flight didn't come up, but the process of writing such an epic biography of a complex, only recently passed man was something worth unpacking over coffee.
I hadn't read the book yet, but over the next few weeks, I got to know the McCandless family in such a sweet way that I wanted to write a little about the book here to perhaps inspire you to seek out a copy of "Wonders All Around."
As much as this is a book about space, it's also a book about grief. And persistence. And stoicism. And masculinity and maternality.
The elder McCandless died in 2017, just a few years after losing his wife, Bernice, to cancer.
This passing of the torch from father to son left the younger McCandless inspired to take on this decades-long narrative. McCandless III sets the tone for the book with a memory of the family sitting around the dinner table at their home outside Johnson Space Center near Houston in the mid 1970s, when his dad, who joined NASA in 1966 at the age of 28, wasn't sure he'd ever actually make it to space.
"Our dinners were somber affairs. We ate around a rectangular Formica table in the breakfast nook. Tracy and I sat on benches padded with orange vinyl cushions. Mom and Dad occupied faux-Spanish style chairs with green felt upholstery. Despite the informal, Howard Johnson's-at-the-airport feel of the furnishings, there was a tension in the air that set in right around the time the frozen string beans started steaming. I had the feeling that my sister and I had forgotten to do something important, though I couldn't figure out what it was, or that judgment had been rendered on us and we'd been found guilty of … something — again, it was unclear what. Horseplay was prohibited. The TV and all sources of music or other frivolity were turned off, and singing was strictly forbidden. The only sound came from the aquarium pump. My father had a 100-gallon tank along the wall behind his chair. Sometimes the big plecostomus would attach itself by its mouth to the glass facing us, and I imagined it sucking all the oxygen out of the room."
Imagining what it must have been like to require oxygen to survive, not in outer space but in the living room with your family, sets up the story of the McCandless ancestors, including a guy who was killed by Wild Bill Hickok and the author's grandfather, who was an admiral in the U.S. Navy.
No pressure, Bruce.
It was fascinating to read about the 18 years that Bruce McCandless II worked for NASA before he finally had his first flight, which debuted the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a jet-fueled backpack that he and Ed Whitsett Jr. spent so many years developing. (That's the joystick-controlled machine he's wearing in that mind-bending poster that hung on millions of Americans' walls over the following decade.)
The author McCandless has the unenviable task of trying to put into words what that flight must have felt like. His dad flew 150 feet away from the shuttle Challenger, which would, of course, break into a million little pieces just a few years later.
When President Reagan called the shuttle to congratulate the astronauts that day in 1984, the command center set up a demonstration space walk to give the president a live view of McCandless through the shuttle window.
Bruce McCandless II, trains with Kathy Sullivan, right, in preparation to launch the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA)
The only problem was, there wasn't much fuel left. McCandless went out anyway, trying to stay within 10-15 feet of the spacecraft. He got into position and turned off the unit to preserve propellant. After the president said a few words and the video switched off, McCandless turned on the unit and "looked for the closest piece of the orbiter, pointed at it, put the hand controller in +X (and) got a sort of sighing noise as it accelerated in that direction." He ran out of fuel just as he grabbed onto a rail on the orbiter. Hand over hand, he brought himself back to the donning station.
It's that kind of suspense that made this book so thrilling to read.
There's space tension like when McCandless is operating as CAPCOM, the only person talking to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin while they are walking on the surface of the moon, and his commander wants him to break protocol and call them back early, even though there are no signs of distress.
The book is also so touching. I cried while reading about the declining health of Bernice, who survived so many astronaut wife struggles over the years and at the end of her life remained a loving partner and mother.
Bruce McCandless was a Navy pilot who was picked to join NASA in 1966. His first space flight wasn't until 1984. (NASA)
It's easy to forget that McCandless II had an entirely other memorable historic moment—launching the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990—and this one seems to have struck an even deeper chord with McCandless III.
The Hubble launch was McCandless' second and final flight. He was 52 and had worked at NASA for 24 years.
McCandless II spends the last chapters of the book making a compelling case that his dad's work to fix and update the Hubble are among the greatest achievements to science. He continued to work on Hubble for another two decades after retiring from NASA through his work at Lockheed Martin.
Bruce McCandless, left, and the flight crew that launched the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. He was 52 years old. (NASA)
He was the "nuts, bolts, screws, and wires guy," the auto mechanic rather than the scientist, who kept the telescope going 340 miles above Earth for more than twice its life expectancy. The Hubble has been cited in more than 18,000 scientific papers and has revealed countless secrets and unsolved mysteries from around the universe and beyond.
"The size, shape, and sheer spectral weirdness of the images boggle the imagination and make prophets and dreamers of us all," McCandless writes toward the end of "Wonders All Around. "Some of us pay therapists to tell us we're important and unique. Then we check in with Hubble so the satellite can inform us just how galactically marginal we all are. The truth is somewhere in the middle."
What a beautiful reminder.
