Local health authorities are toning down some pandemic safety rules for people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, Austin Public Health announced Tuesday.
“As more people become vaccinated in our area, we are able to move to more lenient requirements for those individuals,” Interim Austin-Travis County Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott said in a written statement Tuesday. “However, we have not yet reached herd immunity in our community. To get there, we need more people to acquire immunity which is why we encourage people to get the vaccine when it is available to them.”
People are considered fully inoculated two weeks after their last dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Austin Public Health officials.
KUT
Cars line up at at drive-thru COVID-19 vaccination site at the Toney Burger Activity Center in South Austin last month.
Numbers tracking the coronavirus pandemic in the Austin area have stopped improving and could worsen, new projections show.
The projections released Friday by UT s COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, show lines flattening in the weeks ahead and possibly rising. The consortium reports a 32% probability that the pandemic will worsen here and a reproduction number of .91. A rate above 1 would mean the pandemic is growing in severity. We re seeing plateauing of the projections for hospital admissions, ICU admissions and hospital utilization, Austin Public Health interim Medical Director Dr. Mark Escott said in a briefing. And as of today, entering the stage 2 is off of the projections through the first week of May.
A judge in Texas refused to grant the state's attorney general a restraining order that would force two counties to discontinue enforcing mask mandates.
Texas attorney general threatens to sue unless Austin leaders rescind mask requirement
AUSTIN, Texas Texas’ top law enforcement officer has threatened to sue leaders in the state’s capital for maintaining local coronavirus mask requirements, saying they illegally defy the governor’s order ending a statewide mandate.
Attorney General Ken Paxton, in a letter to Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Travis County Judge Andy Brown, said he would sue unless mask mandates for the city and the county were rescinded by Wednesday at 6 p.m. local time.
But both local leaders say they won’t back down, setting the stage for the latest showdown in a long-running, nationwide clash over public health rules that often breaks along political lines. Sixteen states have no statewide mask rule.
Texas Attorney General Sues City of Austin for Keeping Its COVID Mask Mandate msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.