The City of Austin and Travis County may once again try and force you back into your homes this week. That’s as the threshold of Covid-19 related hospitalizations has been met.
That threshold is 20 new cases a day, imposed weeks ago by Austin Mayor Steve Adler and former Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt. Adler said either we go back to the kind of stay at home orders we had before, or people will die. He said, “there’s a certain number of spaces in those hospitals…if you surge… you fill up those spaces.” Alder continued, that forces hospitals to shove patients into hallways and field hospitals and sometimes that means folks wont get the medical care they need.
Travis County did not record any new deaths over the weekend. However, Adler said the new hospitalization rate puts the area into Stage 4 on the risk chart, meaning he wants masks mandated, non-essential travel to slow, and workers to stay home.
