’Stay home,’ Tarrant judge says; Fort Worth bars, dine-in restaurants on verge of closing
County Judge Glen Whitley is calling on all Tarrant County residents to stay home and for bars, restaurants and gyms to close immediately.
Meanwhile, Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price said Tuesday that within 24 hours the city would mandate restaurants and bars close their dinning rooms and move to delivery or takeout.
Whitley’s plea on Tuesday came after the first COVID-19 case of local transmission in Tarrant County was announced: a health care worker who lives in Grand Prairie, health department officials said.
After a call with Tarrant County mayors Tuesday evening, Whitley said stronger guidelines would be coming. Those mandates would include encouraging restaurants to move to curbside pickup and closing dining rooms, bars, health clubs and gyms. Any businesses that can enforce strong social distancing of greater than six feet should do so, he said.
The mandate right now is a “strong recommendation” but if county officials believe business owners and the public are not following along, the county may move to force the closures, Whitley said.
“I don’t want to have to threaten people,” he said. “Just stay home.”
It wasn’t clear Tuesday evening how the mandate would affect individual cities in Tarrant County, though Whitley said the county was working to coordinate the effort.
Tarrant commissioners on Tuesday extended a emergency declaration to 90 days, which lets them limit crowds and take action to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The county set crowd sizes to half of a building’s occupancy limit, capped at 125 people.
On Monday by Dallas city and county officials closed bars, dine-in restaurants, gyms and theaters. Also on Monday, Price announced that groups no larger than 125 would be allowed in buildings and said the city would cut occupancy limits in half at restaurants, gyms, bars, event centers, retail stores, theaters and public buildings. Grocery stores are excluded.
Those limits remained in place, code compliance director Brandon Bennett said, urging people to refrain from flocking to grocery stores, shopping centers or malls en masse.
Price has begun a series of 6 p.m. Facebook Live streams to update the public on the city’s response.
The instance of local transmission is a significant trigger event for decision making, Public Health Director Vinny Taneja said during an hours-long briefing Tuesday before the Commissioners Court.
“It’s one step short of community spread,” he said.
Community spread means when “some people are infected and do not known how or where they became exposed,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He said commercial labs are coming online to help county workers run coronavirus tests.
Taneja said the county has tested 164 samples for 64 people and found three positive results. Private labs have found another three, he said.
But he said the county is starting to run short of tests, despite starting with around 1,800 samples because they need so-called controls. Taneja said the county has asked federal officials for more and hope they will soon arrive.
“We are trying to conserve and be very judicious with what we do,” he said.
Coronavirus updates
Tarrant officials received a number of updates Tuesday regarding the fight to contain coronavirus.
Among them:
▪ They learned drive through testing sites could soon ramp up. But they aren’t for everyone. The priority of these will be to test first responders and health care workers. “When we hear the term drive-through, we think, ‘It’s for me,’” Taneja said. “It’s not the design for that. We are going to be very methodical about this, very judicious, about what we do in our county.”
▪ The flu season is still in play and allergies are ramping up. If someone has a cough, it does not mean that they have contracted coronavirus. A dry cough and a fever are symptoms that should cause concern.
▪ Officials noted that restrictions were put in place in Tarrant County early, as cases across the county and in nearby Dallas increased. “We don’t have a vaccine or a treatment,” Taneja said, adding that symptoms are being treated, but “that is not a cure.”
▪ Social distancing is key spread out the number of cases. The goal, officials said, is to lower the number of cases over an extended time period to keep the health care system from overloading. But “social distancing only works ... if everyone does it,” Taneja said.
▪ Results from coronavirus tests can take a few hours to two days.
Emergency declaration
Officials declared an emergency in Tarrant County on March 13, in the wake of the first cases of coronavirus reported here. The declaration gave officials the ability to establish an emergency plan and limit crowds.
At the time, Whitley said any event that involves 250 or more people or large groups in confined spaces should be canceled immediately. Businesses should encourage employees to work from home, if they can, and schools are asked to extend spring break 14 days, Whitley said. He also discouraged all non-essential travel.
Tuesday’s move to extend it means it will last for 90 days.
Whitley said the county’s goal, as of Monday, was to reduce crowds to 50% of the occupancy of a building, with a maximum of 125 people.
“That was before Dallas announced they had nine new cases,” Whitley said, noting that local restrictions can change at any time. “Don’t go to a bar ... to have a celebration.
“Stay at home and watch something on TV.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 3:17 PM.
