Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced on Tuesday that he will soon remove the mandate from the state mask, even as federal authorities urge states not to abandon COVID-19 precautions and we observed a slowdown in the reduction of cases across the country.
“Make no mistake, COVID-19 has not disappeared, but it is clear from recoveries, vaccinations, reduced hospitalizations and safe practices that Texans are using state mandates that are no longer needed,” said Abbott, a Republican, in a communicated.
Texas will join a dozen other US states that currently do not have a state requirement to wear masks, including neighboring Oklahoma, according to a National Academy for State Health Policy count. It is currently the most populous state without a state mandate.
The governor’s executive order, which will take effect on March 10, also suspends capacity restrictions imposed on state business. Local authorities can still impose “mitigation strategies” if hospitalizations in their area increase, but they are prohibited from punishing residents who defy mask orientation and cannot limit business capacity to less than 50%.
Cases and deaths from COVID-19 plummeted after an increase following the winter holiday season across the country, including in Texas. The governor justified his decision by pointing to the state’s drop in the case count, noting that the daily case count is the lowest since last November.
But last November, cases of COVID-19 were on the rise in Texas. At the time, Governor Abbott resisted calls to implement stricter measures to stem the spread of the virus, despite increases in hospitalizations.
Health data also shows that the state continues to record new worrying cases of COVID-19 and hospital admissions, making it one of only three “red states” – states with the most worrying test positivity data – in the latest federal guidelines. And as states eased restrictions, the Biden government has repeatedly warned that the country’s drop in COVID-19 cases has eased amid reports of mutant variants of the virus that spread more quickly.
“Please listen to me clearly: at this level of cases, with the variants spreading, we can completely lose the ground conquered with so much effort. These variants are a very real threat to our people and our progress,” said the director of the CDC , Rochelle Walensky. reporters on Monday.
“Now is not the time to relax the critical safeguards that we know can prevent the spread of COVID-19 in our communities,” added Walensky.
Senior White House adviser to COVID’s response, Andy Slavitt, criticized the decision late on Tuesday, arguing that “Now is not the time to do this.”
“We appreciate the challenges that governors face in making all the decisions they face and recognize that many of them must be made by them,” said Slavitt on MSNBC. “But the president made it very clear that we will save many lives in the first 100 days – 50,000 lives, that’s the estimate, if everyone wears masks. And so we think it’s critical, especially now that we’re starting to see an increase in cases in Texas, that we saw last week, and particularly because we now have plans to vaccinate the country. Now is not the time to do that. ”
At a news conference on Tuesday announcing his decision, Governor Abbott warned that lifting the mask requirement “does not end personal responsibility”.
“Personal surveillance to follow security standards is still necessary to contain COVID. Only now state mandates are no longer needed, ”said the governor.