Abbott Ditching of Testing Positivity as Gauge
Clears Way for Bar Openings in GOP Counties

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor
October 19, 2020

The bars returned to life in Lubbock last week with a bang and minimal signs of masks or social distancing in the West Texas college town where they are on track to reclose at the current rate of the coronavirus spread in one of the nation's most infected places. The price of having fun and getting drunk can be steep during the age of the coronavirus.

While the saloons have remained closed in the northern half of the Amarillo area as a result of an order from the Potter County judge, the bars in neighboring Randall County have been serving drinks for the past five days but could be six days away from having to shut down again with the virus out of control in the western half of the Lone Star State.

Governor Greg Abbott made it possible for bars to open on October 15 in most of the largest Texas metros after shelving the testing positivity rate as the guiding gauge for emergency restrictions and replacing it with hospitalization levels - a standard that was regarded as old school during the Spanish Flu attack in 1918.

The bars in the Lubbock and Amarillo areas made it five days before the amount of hospital space taken by covid patients in both places surpassed the 15 percent limit that Abbott imposed on October 9 in a move that opened the gates for watering hole reopenings in a dozen heavily Republican West Texas counties that are sizzling now with the coronavirus.

The Department of State Health Services showed virus victims occupying almost 16 percent of the hospital beds in the South Plains and Panhandle on Monday. The Abbott directive requires bars to shut down after seven consecutive days over 15 percent.

The Republican governor had shuttered the bars in June when the percentage of positive tests in Texas surpassed 10 percent in the third week of the second surge. But the change to covid patient hospital space as the measuring stick cleared the way for the resumption of business at the watering holes in a dozen major Texas counties that wouldn't have qualified with the testing positivity standard that Abbott discarded in September still in place.

All but one of the 12 large counties where club owners got the break with the gubernatorial policy shift are among the last of those that are still controlled by Republicans in the Lone Star State. The bars haven't been allowed to reopen in all of the state's major counties that are run by Democrats - a development that could prompt Abbott to strip local leaders of the power to keep bars shuttered in a move that appears to be fueled almost exclusively by the state of desperation that Republicans are in with the general election just two weeks ago.

El Paso would have been the only major metro at the time Abbott gave the bars the green light to reopen with virus hospitalizations over the new limit at 15.6 percent that day. Covid hospitalizations had soared to 20.8 percent in El Paso as a major Texas city where the virus has been spiking out of control like it has been doing in the past week across West Texas.

The list of 90 Texas counties that wouldn't have been eligible for bar reopenings under the 10 percent positivity rule included heavily Republican Randall and Potter counties where Amarillo is located along with the GOP bastions of Lubbock, the Midland-Odessa area, Abilene and Wichita Falls.

The eight Texas metros with the highest numbers of new cases per capita in the past week are Lubbock, El Paso, Randall, Potter, Wichita, Taylor, Tom Green and Ector counties. None of those West Texas counties would have been eligible for bar reopenings under the positivity standard that Abbott junked in favor of hospitalization percentages as the dividing line.

Bars would have had to remain closed in Tarrant, Montgomery, Gregg and Parker counties as well if testing positivity had been the official gubernatorial gauge.

more to come ...