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Houston Official Blasts Abbott's 'Irresponsible' Lifting of Texas Mask Mandate
Posted
March 3, 2021
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March 3, 2021
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1:19Now PlayingTexas Governor Greg Abbott lifted the mask mandate and other anti-pandemic restrictions, defying warnings from health officials about the perils of dropping those precautions too soon.
Effective March 10, all businesses will be allowed to open at full capacity, Abbott said during a media briefing in Lubbock on Tuesday. Although his executive order allows counties to reimpose anti-virus rules should hospitalizations surge, it forbids them from jailing or fining scofflaws.
“This will kill Texans,” Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement. “Our country’s infectious disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down even as we make progress towards vaccinations.”
Abbott acted at what federal authorities warn is a critical juncture in the pandemic that has killed 516,000 Americans: While hospitalizations and caseloads have dropped in Texas and nationwide, U.S. vaccinations are not yet widespread enough to provide so-called herd immunity, and new, easier-to-spread variants of Covid-19 are proliferating.
Abbot’s move drew immediate criticism from Democrats while giving the Republican governor an opportunity to shift attention from the weather-induced blackouts that crippled the state two weeks ago. Texas’ deregulated electric market, a product of the state’s GOP leadership, is at the center of blame for the failures.
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