AUSTIN, Texas — Austin Mayor Steve Adler spoke to KVUE Monday morning about the stay home order extension he and Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt put into place last week.
On Friday, May 1, Texas retail stores, restaurants, malls, movie theaters and museums were allowed to reopen with some restrictions. A week later on May 8, Gov. Greg Abbott gave hair, nail and tanning salons the OK to also open their doors again with some restrictions.
The Austin-Travis County stay home orders were set to expire on May 8, but Mayor Adler and Judge Eckhardt said Friday during a virtual press conference it is being extended until the end of May for Austin and June 15 for Travis County. The order encourages everyone to stay home and practice social distancing as much as possible, Adler said.
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When asked about the confusion over what some believe to be contradicting orders from the State and the City, Adler said they fall under the same umbrella.
"The governor's order asked people to stay at home, asked people to only go out if you're engaging in an essential business or (reopening) business. It urges people to stay away from large groups. It suggests that people spend most of their time with their household units," Adler said. "So in that regard, the City's order and the county's order are exactly the same as the state's order."
He said that just because the governor is slowly reopening businesses, Texans should not let their guard down.
"If the governor's plan is going to work, if we want to give it the best chance to succeed, the way that we do that is by staying 6 feet apart, by wearing the face coverings, by not being in groups. That's how we help this toe-dip back into commerce," Adler said.
Adler told KVUE that the more physical interactions we have, the more infections we have, and more people are going to end up in the hospital.
"And we know that that just happens," the mayor said. "But we want to try to tamp down those numbers as best we can."
With summer fast approaching, the city has expectations for using pools and recreational centers. Pools and gyms can reopen, but with restrictions. Adler said the city is maintaining the procedures they had in place until they see an increase in cases because of the reopening.
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"You know, there's a lag time," Adler said. "So changes in policies today actually don't get reflected in new cases for a couple of weeks. They don't get reflected in new hospitalizations for three weeks. So we really need to see some data to know where we are before we start expanding things more and more."
"This virus is going to be with us for a while until there's a cure or treatment. This is not going away. We have the ability to control how quickly it passes through our community and what kind of a rush there is." Adler said.
Adler talked about data from different sources, and that the most important data to look at right now is the number of hospitalizations.
"The total number of people who are in our hospital at any one point in time, but also the number of new cases on any given day. When you start taking a look at the number of total new cases to a large degree, that's dependent on the number of tests that you give, as you give more tests, you're going to find more people," Adler said. "And until we're able to test everybody in the community, we're really not going to know about the penetration in our community, how many people actually have it as a percentage of the total."
But it's not all bleak.
Adler believes Austin has a history of being able to rebound quickly from national economic crises.
"We have a very resilient community. We have a lot of people in our community that are able to work from home," he said. "We have so many of the ingredients that are necessary for an economy to come back strong. That's one of the reasons why I choose to live here."
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