{"id":1651,"date":"2021-08-10T06:44:43","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T06:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=1651"},"modified":"2021-08-10T06:44:43","modified_gmt":"2021-08-10T06:44:43","slug":"austin-warns-of-catastrophe-as-texas-again-becomes-center-of-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=1651","title":{"rendered":"Austin warns of \u2018catastrophe\u2019 as Texas again becomes center of pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"font-size:22px\">With Covid-19 cases&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/live\/2021\/08\/08\/world\/covid-delta-variant-vaccine\">skyrocketing exponentially<\/a>&nbsp;and intensive care unit capacity in hospitals dwindling to single digits, officials in the Austin area are warning of \u201ccatastrophe\u201d as Texas again becomes an center of the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:22px\">Austin\u2019s local governments&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.austintexas.gov\/news\/city-and-county-use-alert-system-covid-19-situation\">issued an urgent message<\/a>&nbsp;through&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kvue.com\/article\/news\/health\/coronavirus\/aph-warn-central-texas-alert-delta-variant\/269-e312de86-194f-4ace-83dc-7e6311b1017b\">their emergency notification system<\/a>&nbsp;Saturday, imploring residents to stay home, mask up and get vaccinated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:22px\">The entreaty comes mere days after Austin Public Health elevated its risk-based guidance to stage 5, the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.austintexas.gov\/news\/austin-travis-county-returns-stage-5\">highest possible tier.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:22px\">\u201cThe situation is critical,\u201d Desmar Walkes, Austin-Travis county\u2019s health authority, said in a statement. \u201cOur hospitals are severely stressed and there is little we can do to alleviate their burden with the surging cases.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:22px\">The Texas trauma service area that includes Austin\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/txdshs.maps.arcgis.com\/apps\/dashboards\/0d8bdf9be927459d9cb11b9eaef6101f\">only has six available ICU beds<\/a>, 499 available hospital beds and 313 available ventilators \u2013 a stunning dearth of resources for a population nearly 2.4 million strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\">For More Information: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2021\/aug\/09\/austin-catastrophe-epicenter-again-pandemic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2021\/aug\/09\/austin-catastrophe-epicenter-again-pandemic<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With Covid-19 cases&nbsp;skyrocketing exponentially&nbsp;and intensive care unit capacity in hospitals dwindling to single digits, officials in the Austin area are warning of \u201ccatastrophe\u201d as Texas again becomes an center of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,375],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-delta","category-news-of-the-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}