Texas has not yet “conquered” the coronavirus and will “take a little time” to eliminate it, although the state has made some progress, Governor Greg Abbott told CNBC on Friday.
“We are changing the situation in the state of Texas. It is only going to take a little time, but we will be fine,” he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”.
Abbott said one of the challenges Texas faced when it reopened was that people thought the coronavirus had been “completely defeated” and that the state would not experience the widespread infections that were first reported in New York earlier this year.
“The first challenge I had to do was help my colleagues in Texas understand that the coronavirus is real, it’s here, it’s not going to go away, we have to step forward and understand how we have to respond fully.” Abbott said.
Texas was one of the first states to largely reopen its economy around the beginning of May, allowing retail services in stores, restaurants, movie theaters, shopping malls, museums, and libraries to return with limited capacity. The state’s bars and gyms were then allowed to reopen with capacity limitations.
However, Abbott rolled back some of the reopens on June 26 after coronavirus cases in Texas rose to record levels for weeks. The Lone Star Governor issued a statewide mask mandate on July 2 that required residents across the state to cover their faces in public spaces in counties with 20 or more positive cases following requests from multiple mayors of Texas.
Abbott said Friday that the mask’s mandate “probes overwhelmingly,” noting that 85% of Texans agree that facial masks can prevent companies from closing.
Texas reached a record average daily death toll from the coronavirus on Thursday, reporting about 138 additional deaths based on a seven-day average, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The cases, however, showed signs of leveling off, with the state’s seven-day average falling more than 3% compared to a week ago, according to Hopkins data.
“I feel like we’ve reached a plateau where we’ve contained Covid’s exponential growth at this particular time, but we have a lot more work to do in the coming weeks,” said Abbott. “We don’t have Covid conquered right now.”
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