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Increased demand for COVID-19 testing nationally continues to slow turnaround times and thwart contact tracing efforts.
Sustained demand for testing continues to slow turnaround times at public testing sites and thwart contact tracing efforts even though Austin officials are reporting positive trends in COVID data.
The number of COVID-related hospital admissions and daily new confirmed cases are plateauing and indicate recent policy changes—including a state masking mandate and local park closures—are curbing transmission, local officials said.
"This is refreshing news," Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott said at a press conference on Wednesday.
But Austin Public Health continues to limit access to its free testing service to residents with symptoms or known exposure to the virus even as its capacity has increased dramatically—88% in the month of July.
The department is now conducting more than 6,000 tests a week. "This is roughly double the testing that we did just a few weeks ago, so we're very proud about that," Dr. Escott said Tuesday.
Turnaround times are holding steady—at around five to seven days for tests conducted by APH, according to Chief Epidemiologist Janet Pichette—but are still long enough that patients may recover by the time they learn their results.
"The purpose of testing at this stage is to contact trace, to isolate, to box it in," Dr. Escott said, but he added that current delays render this strategy ineffective.
These issues are not unique to Austin.
Quest Diagnostics, one of the country's largest clinical labs, reported an average turnaround time of a week or longer in a July 20 press statement.
"While some patients may receive their test results in as quickly as 2-3 days, a small subset of patients may experience wait times of up to two weeks," the company wrote.
Quest attributed the delay to increased demand for testing, which it said is highest in the South, Southwest and Western regions of the U.S.
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Popular
(Gensler)
A park in the sky. That’s how Ed Muth, Gensler principal-in-charge of the Sixth and Guadalupe project, describes the outdoor deck on level 14 of the building.
It’s a gathering space that’ll be lushly landscaped and filled with various plant types. It’ll also have spaces for sitting and a small amphitheater tech space. It’s poised to be an area for Meta employees to spend time and mingle once the tech giant moves in next spring.
As downtown grows with increased residential and office space, the tech industry’s influence in the area is clear with Google’s sailboat tower plus TikTok signing a lease on Colorado. How will Sixth and Guadalupe shape Austin’s skyline?
For starters, it's poised to be the tallest tower in Austin when it is completed in 2023, standing 66 floors high. The deal with Meta, Facebook's parent company, was inked on Dec. 31, 2021 and is downtown Austin's largest lease ever, spanning across 33 floors and 589,000 square feet. It'll cater to some of the 2,000 employees that have been working in Austin. The social media giant has also said it plans on adding 400 more employees.
Key to the project, Muth told Austonia, is making sure clients get everything that they expected out of it.
Soon-to-be residents, the first of which are expected to come in the summer of next year, will occupy space from level 34 up and can expect gaming lounges, theater space, a garden on level 53 plus some pools. The one on level 66 will be the highest pool deck in Austin, Muth said.
The flashy amenities are sure to catch the attention of people vying to move in, but other major design elements were brought on by the Capitol view corridor.
“It's set out there to make sure that we don't block the views of the Capitol,” Muth said. “It kind of set the rules for where we can build, where we could position the building, how we design, the shape of the building, and how we put the square footage together in that building.”
A building of this undertaking involved a team of about 20 people at Gensler, a global architecture firm headquartered in San Francisco. They’ve been working with commercial developer Lincoln Property Company and residential developer Kairoi plus about a dozen consultants, some of whom were in Austin and others in Dallas.
The downtown tower boom has been in the works for some time. Muth said they’ve built a lot of trust working with them for the past five years, with some of their work carried out remotely during COVID-19. In the early days of the pandemic, downtown areas across the country—Austin included—saw lowered activity and both residents and workers heading to suburbs and other areas of the city.
“It really rose to its form, as we see it today, during that time, and a lot of people weren't downtown,” Muth said. “So it probably surprised some folks when they came back downtown to say, ‘Wow, where'd that come from?’”
About two weeks ago, Muth made a visit to the site, noticing restaurants and retail that hadn’t been there previously. Sixth and Guadalupe itself will include retail on the ground floor, adding to downtown’s growth even on the sidewalk level.
“Just looking out from the level 14th floor deck, I think we counted five or six, maybe seven new construction sites that are within blocks of this project. The area's rapidly changing,” Muth said.
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(Laura Figi/Austonia)
Two of Austin’s biggest celebrities are joining forces for a Q&A session open to the public.
Minister of Culture Matthew McConaughey and former Longhorn Emmanuel Acho will meet at LBJ Auditorium, 2313 Red River St., on May 22 at 2 p.m.
The author behind New York Times bestselling book "Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man,” Acho will be there to celebrate the recent release of his new book, “Illogical: Saying Yes to a Life Without Limits.”
Acho had McConaughey on his Youtube series of the same name in June 2020.
“Two of your favorite Texans in person and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. It doesn’t happen often and may not happen again, so bring your questions, bring a friend, and prepare to be inspired and entertained," Acho said on social media.
The event is organized in partnership with BookPeople and the Moody College of Communication. Tickets are available for $45.
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