COVID mandates lifted
Governor Greg Abbott is scrapping the statewide mask mandate, allowing businesses to reopen fully on March 10. He says Texas is handling COVID-19 better than a few months ago and small businesses are very much hurting.
“Too many Texans have been sidelined from employment opportunities. Too many small business owners have struggled to pay their bills this must end,” says Abbott.
He cites the growing number of Texans who are vaccinated as a major reason for why he thinks reopening is appropriate now.
Not unexpectedly, local health officials are not at all happy with the lifting of the statewide mask order. Travis County Health Authority Mark Escott has remained one of the loudest proponents of mask wearing in the area.
“Now is too soon to return to normal. Now is too soon to take away masking. Now is too soon to forget about social distancing,” says Escott.
Governor Abbott has still left plenty of power with the private sector, which can still choose to require customers to wear masks and places of business. And in fact, many Austin businesses have already said they plan to do just that.
Masking in HEB
Texas grocer HEB says it will respect the governor’s decision to lift the mask mandate by ending its own requirement that customers wear one. However, Mabrie Jackson with HEB says stores will strongly urge customers to voluntarily mask up nevertheless.
“By role modeling and using in store messaging, signs at their front doors. But it will be up to a customer’s personal responsibility,” says Jackson.
All HEB employees will still be required to wear a mask, and individual masks will also be made available to customers for free at HEB locations all across the state.
The Austin City Council continues to push the importance it sees in masking. Following Governor Greg Abbott’s ruling to end the mass mandate. Council Member Greg Casar slammed the decision on Twitter, calling the governor a coward. Austin Mayor Steve Adler also has his criticisms saying the governor’s decision doesn’t have the kind of medical backing he’d like to see.
“Not supported by any of the scientists or any of the data that I’ve heard,” says Adler.
City leaders are pushing residents to continue to mask up and abide by COVID mitigation practices.
Division on masking
Depending on who you ask, the lifting of the COVID restrictions is either a blessing or a curse. Anne Spilman, with the Texas Wing of the National Federation of Independent Business, says it’s great to have a choice once again about masks and capacity.
“It’s very good news for small business owners. Sort of eliminates some of the fear moving forward still with some uncertainty ahead,” says Spilman.
A lot of other groups, though, still remain very concerned that Texans now have this choice.
The Texas State Teachers Association says Governor Abbott is putting school campuses at risk. As teacher groups expressed their concern, the Austin school district says it will still continue requiring masks to be worn by all students and employees. AISD says it’s also awaiting guidance from the Texas Education Agency on what to do next.
COVID-19 update
Travis County has seen more declines in its COVID numbers over the past day. 241 people are in the hospital this morning, out of 1,661 active cases, 73 people in the ICU and 76,088 cases have been confirmed over the past 12 months with 73,678 people making a recovery.
UT sued for online classes
The University of Texas system is being sued over tuition during the pandemic. It’s a class action suit arguing that online classes are not the same as in-person class and therefore shouldn’t cost the same. Student Lily Rembert tells CBS Austin she completely agrees.
“I’m a very hands on, like, in-person learner. So it makes it easier to understand concepts, whereas like online, it’s teaching myself,” Rembert says.
The suit says students are paying for a first rate educational experience and instead have gotten “materially deficient and insufficient alternative”.
Prop B reworded
Local nonprofit Save Austin Now scores a win that it had been hoping for in the Texas Supreme Court, which has ruled the City of Austin must reword the Proposition B ballot language regarding a citywide public camping ban. In a 6 to 3 ruling, the Supreme Court has said the city’s chosen ballot language could mislead voters and therefore must be revised.
Job posting on SpaceX
Tesla CEO Elon Musk may not be done planning his flags in the area. A job posting on the SpaceX website is looking for an engineer to oversee a new manufacturing facility in Austin. Musk’s presence in Austin has grown quite large with major plans in the works for the Tesla Gigafactory in Del Valley, The Boring Company in Pflugerville and the Neuralink Company in Austin.
This news and more on News Radio KLBJ:
https://omny.fm/shows/klbjam-flash-briefing-1/am-newscast-3-3-21
