City Acts to Reign in Coronavirus

San Angelo officials undertook a flurry of activity to address weeks of growth in coronavirus cases.  Yesterday afternoon the city published:

The City of San Angelo has issued an order that prohibits any outdoor public events over 100 people and all public events with more than 100 people in any City facility. This is effective immediately. This also applies to outdoor events in the county unless approved by the county judge.

In addition, it requires masks to be worn in all auditoriums/theaters and performance halls by employees, volunteers and audience members.

The City gave an exception to events approved by City Council's Special Events process.

It's not clear which upcoming events fit that exception.

Wake the Desert canceled this year's event due to the coronavirus.

The flurry came after cases rose from 95 before Memorial Day weekend to 282 this afternoon. Mayor Brenda Gunter shared her concerns with citizens on March 16th.  City Council as a whole and Tom Green County Commissioners Court failed to address the growth in cases in their recent meetings.  Public health officials made no presentation and elected leaders asked no questions of those officials.

Commissioner's Court did approve spending over $1 million in coronavirus aid.

County Judge Steven Floyd did not think citizens were up for everyone wearing a mask, a component of a gold standard pandemic approach.

Another element is rigorous contact tracing.  Two days ago the city said it would classify all cases as community spread from this point forward.  The City Attorney informed Council several meetings ago that she was doing contract tracing, but that was before our local numbers soared.

This afternoon Local Health Authority Dr. Vretis ordered shoppers to wear masks to prevent further disease spread.

Effective 12:00 a.m. on June 27, 2020 all retail stores that have a posted occupancy load of 100 persons or more within Tom Green County, Texas shall require all customers 10 years or older and all employees to wear a mask or cloth that covers the mouth and nose while they are within the store or within 6 feet of a person from another household when they are outside the store and on store property.

His order revealed the "length of time it takes to get a COVID-19 test result back has increased to seven days."  A week's delay in diagnosis makes contact tracing very difficult.

That means San Angelo is behind the curve on three elements of a gold standard pandemic response, everyone wear a mask, rigorous contact tracing and aggressive testing.

Texas had a record 5,996 new cases today.  The U.S. hit a record 36,975 cases yesterday.  A gold standard pandemic response is sorely needed but elected officials don't have an appetite for it.

Update 6-26-20:  San Angelo reported 29 positive cases today (311 total), while Texas had 5,707.  The United States reached another record with more than 44,000 new cases.  Dr. Anthony Fauci said contract tracing was not going well.

Update 6-27-20:  San Angelo had 31 new cases today bringing the total to 342.   Texas passed Illinois today to become the state with the 4th largest number of cases.  Not long ago Texas was over 20,000 cases behind Illinois.