Texas House will keep masks, other COVID-19 precautions — for now

AUSTIN — After hearing from medical experts, a committee that oversees the Texas House’s internal matters such as lawmakers’ office assignments, budgets and parking spaces has decided to leave the chamber’s COVID-19 safety precautions in place — at least for now.

On Monday, the House Administration Committee left in place the chamber’s mask requirement and some flexibilities adopted in January, at the pandemic’s peak, for lawmakers to participate virtually in hearings on legislation and vote from secure laptops just off the House floor.

Newly elected Rep. Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City, proposed a complete rollback.

Citing Gov. Greg Abbott’s reopening of Texas earlier this month, Slaton said the House risks giving “the appearance of special treatment” to itself if it maintains stricter disease-mitigation requirements.

Several Democrats, though, said 47,200 Texans have died because of the novel coronavirus, and it’s no time to set a bad example.

“It’d be a disservice to the memory of the lives of those people that we lost to be irresponsible in how we comport ourselves in this building,” said Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston.

Dallas Rep. Rafael Anchia and other Democrats on the committee elicited testimony from two medical experts who said that while new cases and hospitalizations and deaths have declined sharply from records set early in the year, less than 15% of the state’s population have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Variants are circulating that may become more dangerous, said David Lakey, vice chancellor for health affairs and chief medical officer for the University of Texas System.

Rep. Tom Oliverson, a Cypress Republican and physician proposed just lifting the House’s mask requirement – apparently to allow an alternative to Slaton’s total rollback.

Oliverson, a top ally of Speaker Dade Phelan, called Lakey and Dr. John Zerwas, a former lawmaker and also a top administrator at the UT System’s health sciences centers, to testify.

“I don’t think that we’re at a place where … you should just totally abandon the mask,” Zerwas said. “I mean, let’s face it, the majority of the population is still naive from an immune system to being able to respond to the coronavirus.”