Iran Press/ America: 'The situation is critical,' Austin's public health medical director Desmar Walkes said, warning of a 'catastrophe' as it sent the notification to residents at noon through text messages, emails, and phone calls.
“Our hospitals are severely stressed and there is little we can do to alleviate their burden with the surging cases. Hospital bed availability and critical care are extremely limited in our hospital systems," Walkes said, rallying residents to help “stave off disaster."
The warning came just two days after the city’s health department bumped up its risk level to its highest at stage 5 due to the highly contagious delta variant, pushing residents to get vaccinated, stay home, and mask up even if they have had their shots.
With ICU beds down to a single digit, Austin sounded the alarm Saturday, using its emergency alert system to let residents in the Texas capital city know that the local state of the pandemic is “dire."
A total of 313 ventilators in Austin hospitals are available.
The Austin-Travis County Emergency Operations Center will be using the Warn Central Texas notification system (08/7) to implore the public to do more to fight COVID-19.
The risk level was raised after the seven-day moving average for new hospital admissions increased more than 600% in the past month, while patients in intensive-care units jumped 570%. Covid patients on ventilators surged to 102 as of Saturday from just eight on July 4, the health department said. More may follow as cases in the Austin area increased 10 times.
The jump in cases is also seen nationwide. New infections in the U.S. have rebounded to more than 100,000 a day on average, returning to levels of the winter surge six months ago. Weekly cases on Friday passed 750,000, the most since early February, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg.
Cases are rising even as the U.S. pace of vaccination started to tick up after months of decline. Daily average deaths more than doubled in the past month, even while remaining far below the levels of last winter, with healthcare experts warning that the pace of new infections could trigger deadlier mutations.
“It clearly has taken a very bad turn," Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, said in a Bloomberg Quicktake interview earlier this week.
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