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All residents are asked to wear masks in Austin as city reenters Stage 4 level of COVID risk. (Charlie L. Harper III/Austonia)
After a week at the Stage 4 threshold, local health officials have officially made the shift to Stage 4, according to their risk-based guidelines.
At this stage, all residents—including those who are vaccinated—are recommended to wear masks at all times while indoors, and unvaccinated individuals are asked not to gather at all and only to make essential trips.
This is the first time since February of this year Travis County reached Stage 4; local health officials announced the shift to Stage 3 last week. Since July 4, the seven-day moving average for hospitalizations has increased by over 203% from 63 to 202 hospitalizations, according to Austin Public Health data. There were 39 new hospitalizations alone on Thursday.
Earlier this week, University of Texas researchers projected the city could see a 92% drop in hospitalizations if residents comply with Stage 4 recommendations.
Ahead of the official announcement, health officials were asking all residents to mask up as if in Stage 4. Independent businesses, such as Waterloo Records and Book People, have adopted officials' recommendations and asked patrons to wear a mask once more. APH expects with the official shift, others will follow suit. As for bars, they say people should wear masks. APH said its recommendations will not affect large events, such as Austin FC games, from operating.
The recommendation is not legally enforceable due to Gov. Greg Abbott's executive order prohibiting mask mandates in May—which he recently said he wouldn't reverse.
The Delta variant—which is now responsible for most new COVID cases, according to the CDC—has been of particular concern to health officials, as it is more contagious and produces more severe symptoms. There have been four confirmed Delta variant cases in Travis County, but officials say there is likely more that have gone undetected due to testing delays.
The number of COVID patients in area ICUs have increased nearly 242% from 24 people on July 4 to 82 people on Thursday, APH reports. With nearly all of hospitalized patients proven to be unvaccinated, APH is asking residents to get vaccinated to prevent the spread.
The county has yet to reach its goal vaccination rate of 70%—the threshold for herd immunity—and currently sits at 62% of the population over the age of 12 fully vaccinated.
"Each of us has a personal choice to make: Will we do our part to stop disease transmission by getting vaccinated and taking the necessary precautions to protect ourselves and others, or will we be part of its continued spread?" Austin-Travis County Health Authority Dr. Desmar Walkes said Friday.
For info on how to get vaccinated, click here.
- Delta variant, unvaccinated fuel rise of Austin COVID cases - austonia ›
- COVID hospitalizations reach Stage 4 threshold - austonia ›
- Austin businesses resume mask mandates amid Stage 4 shift - austonia ›
- Austin families weight back-to-school options amid Stage 4 - austonia ›
- Austin now at threshold for Stage 4 COVID guidelines - austonia ›
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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.
