Travis County Coronavirus Count Tops 16.5K Cases, 4 New Deaths

AUSTIN, TX — The number of new cases of the coronavirus in Travis County grew by 572 in a mere 24-hour period on Wednesday, bringing thet total number of cases historically to 16,570. In addition, health officials reported four new deaths that brought the fatality count thus far to 184 across Travis County.

The latest data are found on a statistical dashboard maintained by Austin Public Health. According to the dashboard, 492 patients are currently hospitalized, including 159 being treated at intensive care units and another 97 placed on ventilators.

As shown among the data, 78 new patients were admitted on Wednesday, pushing the seven-day rolling average of hospitalizations to 71.1 — slightly above the 70 mark that health officials have said could prompt a citywide shutdown to blunt the spread of a respiratory illness for which no vaccine exists.

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Austin is currently at a Stage 4 risk alert. But health officials have said that if hospitalizations should rise exponentially, the level could rise to Stage 5, which would trigger drastic measures — such as the aforementioned city shutdown — to mitigate further spread of the illness scourge.

Coronavirus has spread exponentially since Gov. Greg Abbott launched an aggrssive economic reopening that started on May 1. Seeing robust illness spikes since, the governor has taken steps to curb the rising rates of illness.

Related story: Texas Reports Deadliest Coronavirus Day With 110 New Deaths

Among those measures was his reordering bars to close up again. For the second time since the onset of illness, he also banned all elective surgeries and medical procedures to ensure hospital space for an anticipated influx of coronavirus patients. Abbott also paused his own economic expansion, which amounted not to more closures but a halt in allowing already-opened businesses to operate at 100 percent capacity.

In a dramatic development, Abbott also recently mandated the wearing of protective face coverings across the state to help blunt the spread of illness — a departure for him after initially extolling the virtues of "personal responsibility" in making mask usage optional. Still, he issued an executive order waiving the requirement for those attending worship services he deemed "essential services" not subject to the most rigid safeguards in protecting constitutional religious rights, Abbott has suggested in the past.

The measures may have come too late, with counties reprorting an ever-increasing rate of illness. According to the dashboard, the counties with the highest concentrations of illness are:

• Harris: 49,027 cases.
• Dallas: 35,914 cases.
• Tarrant: 19,014 cases.
• Bexar: 17,458 cases.
• Travis: 15,998 cases.
• El Paso: 10,298 cases.
• Hidalgo: 8,197 cases.
• Nueces: 7,032 cases.
• Galveston: 6,307 cases.
• Fort Bend: 5,211 cases.
• Collin: 4,800 cases.
• Cameron: 4,590 cases.
• Denton: 4,316 cases.
• Williamson: 4,153 cases.

At Abbott's direction, Texas was the second state attemtping to reignite its coronavirus-stalled economy one week after Georgia even as most states were waiting to see a definitive flattening of the illness curve before launching similar efforts. In launching the statewide economic reopening, Abbott insisted the initiative was being informed by insight from "doctors and data."