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Booster shots have been approved by the FDA for immunocompromised people. (Jordan Vonderhaar)
After a steep incline of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the Austin metro for over a month, the curve could finally begin to flatten.
At a special joint session between the Austin City Council and the Travis County Commissioners, local health officials gave an update on the COVID situation in the area; here are five takeaways.
It's back-to-school season. How will that affect COVID in the area?
The Austin area is seeing early signs of the curve flattening that Austin's Health Authority Dr. Desmar Walkes is attributing to a change in COVID precautions taken. Since hitting Stage 5 last month, health authorities have emphasized the need to mask to stop the spread of the Delta variant and have ramped up vaccination efforts.
With Austin ISD and other area school districts employing that students and staff wear a mask, despite ongoing court battles in other Texas cities, Walkes said she hopes to see the curve continue to flatten.
"To curb the spread, we must encourage the kids and staff at our schools to wear a mask."
How many ICU beds are available?
Across the state, ICU beds have been extremely limited. "There's not a lot of transfer that's occurring between major metropolitan areas at this point," Walkes said.
The number of ICU beds in the 11-county Austin metro has fluctuated in the single digits for over a week now; on Sunday, only one ICU bed was available. As of Monday, there are 665 currently hospitalized and only nine ICU beds available.
The age group seeing the most hospitalizations is 50-69 year-olds.
A majority of ICU patients have been unvaccinated, according to Walkes.
Will an alternate care site open?
An alternate care site, like the one that opened at the Austin Convention Center in December, could open sometime soon to support the need of the community, according to Walkes. "We have plans ready to go for that," Walkes said.
The need comes as ICU capacity is projected to be limited across the state. More details, such as location and when it could be set up, were not revealed.
What's else is new?
A new regional infusion center for monoclonal antibody therapy opened on Monday. This facility will treat those at risk for severe illness, hospitalizations and death. The treatment is also used for post-exposure prophylaxis, when an immunocompromised person is been exposed to COVID.
To get this treatment, a local provider will need to refer patients. It is meant to keep these patients out of hospitals by treating them ahead of severe symptoms.
Who is eligible for a booster shot?
As of Monday, the CDC and FDA began recommending immunocompromised people get a third shot of the Pfizer or Moderna, known as a booster shot. Austin Public Health is following the guidance and recommending immunocompromised Austinites seek out a booster shot. Booster shots were approved by the FDA for Pfizer and Moderna only.
Boosters are recommended for those:
- Receiving treatment for solid tumors or blood cancers
- Taking immunosuppression medications after a solid organ transplant
- Within two year of receiving CAR-T therapy or stem cell therapy
- Who have primary immunodeficiencies
- With advanced or untreated HIV
- Taking high-dose corticosteroids, alkylating agents, antimetabolites, chemotherapy, TNF blockers
- With certain chronic medical conditions
- Receiving dialysis
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(Pexels)
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.
