Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson spoke bluntly on Tuesday morning about the city’s growing crisis with the coronavirus and the related economic fallout, warning things could get worse before they get better.

He and other city officials also detailed new measures meant to assist an overloaded medical system, from requiring hospitals to file daily reports of their available hospital beds and ventilators, to creating a temporary 250-bed hospital at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.

“We will get through this. But I want to be honest with you, I believe that challenging days are ahead,” Johnson said during a live-streamed press conference. “The numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and the number of unemployed people are both rising quickly. The world is slowing down as we are simultaneously scaling up our preparations.”

He added: “This insidious virus is going to test us, but it will not break us.”

He and the other officials talked about a wide range of subjects from the new measures at hospitals, to how the city is handling evictions, to possible citations for violating requirements for crowds and social distancing.

There have been 631 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Dallas County, and the City of Dallas has been the epicenter of the outbreak. The latest available data indicated the city made up about 62 percent of the county’s cases.

On Monday night, Johnson issued another amendment to the city’s emergency regulations that requires hospitals to file daily reports on availability by 4 p.m. Hospitals need to report both the number of beds that are in-use and the number available, as well as the in-use and available ICU beds and the in-use and available ventilators.

He said on Tuesday this will help the city “effectively manage our resources in the event of a surge in hospitalizations.”

But the city, Johnson said, also wants residents to help ease the burden on medical professionals by adhering to the requirements on crowds and social distancing issued by the city and the county. There were complaints over the weekend of groups of people congregating at White Rock Lake and Katy Trail, Johnson said.

He said rumors that the city is going to be shutting down parks and trails aren’t true, but he urged residents to practice social distancing when they are out in public spaces. He “would rather not shut down completely our open-air amenities while we’re telling people to remain at home most of the day,” he said.

But City Manager T.C. Broadnax said this week officials will be looking into possibly issuing citations for people or businesses that don’t adhere to the regulations.

“That could be a fine ranging from obviously $0 up to $2,000,” he said during the press conference.

Another issue that came up was the state of evictions in the city as residents who are now out of work struggle to pay rent. Johnson said a city council member submitted a memorandum requesting an ordinance change that would add another step to the eviction process, building in time. That has been referred to a city ad hoc committee to thoroughly vet.

It “could have significant legal ramifications,” he said.

He did offer a plea to landlords, however: “Have a heart.”

“These are incredibly difficult times for everyone and particularly for some of our most vulnerable members of our community,” Johnson said. “Do not compound our city’s problems by putting people out on the streets. Not right now.”

Rocky Vaz, the director of the Dallas Office of Emergency Management, took some time during the press conference to speak about the federal medical station at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center that will be Texas’ first pop-up hospital in response to the coronavirus.

Workers with the Texas National Guard were in the process of setting up the hospital on Tuesday morning, which will have 250 beds, Vaz said. A 225-member medical unit from the U.S. Navy will run the hospital along with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Leaders from the Dallas medical community are meeting to “understand the scope” of the availability problem in hospitals “and they’ll give us a mission as to what they want this hospital to be,” Vaz said.

“We’re hoping to have that this morning,” he said, “and that’ll drive how we set up the hospital and what kind of services we need.”

This story was originally published March 31, 2020 at 1:30 PM.