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AUSTIN, Texas (KTRK) — A sobering Saturday in Houston comes as the city reported 1,524 new cases of COVID-19. In addition, the Houston Health Department reports nine additional deaths. So far, 268 Houstonians have died officially because of COVID-19.
“We’re still headed in the wrong direction,” said Mayor Sylvester Turner during an afternoon food distribution event. “I strongly recommend that, for the next two weeks, that the Governor would bring things down. Shut this down to take the energy from this virus.”
Turner is not the only elected official pushing for another shutdown.
At HCA Northwest Hospital, there is now a refrigerated container parked outside the hospital, for when its morgues get overwhelmed.
“Any place across the south right now, the staff is getting exhausted and I’m worried for our cities,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “I’m worried for our state, and I’m worried for our country.”
Dr. Hotez says even if every Texan actually wore a mask, and testing was actually accessible to all, COVID-19 would still be almost impossible to contain, unless we as a country work together.
“It’s not just these isolated one-off measures in states,” he says. “The problem that we’re facing is that we don’t have a national strategy. Someone in the White House needs to be looking at every state in the country, and to say to every governor, ‘This is what we need to get into containment in the fall.'”
Hotez said right now, he sees no options in Texas, other than to lockdown the state for a few more weeks. Otherwise, cases will continue to spiral out of control.
“I think that’s going to be necessary, not just for here but for other states.”