Residents in and around Houston have been alerted via a public safety text message to avoid any holiday gatherings outside of their immediate family in order to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The text message asking residents to cancel social events during the Thanksgiving-Christmas season and get tested for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 was distributed to all of Harris County’s 4.7 million residents via their mobile phone or device during Tuesday afternoon’s rush hour.
''This is not the year … to have a great holiday gathering, a great outing at the bar, restaurant. It’s just not the time,'' Fort Worth CBS affiliate KTVT quoted Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s top elected official.
The move comes as other cities and states have begun to reimpose restrictions last seen in the spring. New Mexico and Oregon have reinstituted stay-at-home orders and closed ''non-essential'' businesses, while others have again limited indoor capacities at stores and closed schools.
The seven-day moving average of reports of new daily cases has climbed since mid-September from roughly 36,000 a day to just under 165,000 on Wednesday, a four-and-a-half fold increase, according to worldometers.info.
Daily deaths, however, have climbed since mid-October from about 700 a day to 1,265 on Wednesday, about an 80% increase.
Texas has seen its number of new daily cases rise sharply since early October, from a seven-day average of about 3,500 to 10,700 as of Wednesday.
Harris County has the most cases reported in the state since the outbreak of the flu-like respiratory illness, more than 177,000, and the most deaths, 2,928, nearly 50% higher than the next closest county, Hidalgo with 2,015.
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