As COVID-19 hospitalizations rates stay above 15%, North Texas counties are preparing to rollback capacity rates at restaurants and businesses. NBC 5’s Julie Fine talked to officials in Collin County about how they will handle the governor’s reduced capacity orders.
In McKinney, there are no bars left, according to Mayor George Fuller they've all converted to restaurants and are serving food. But now all restaurants, businesses, and gyms face serving fewer customers as the number of hospitalizations for COVID-19 have been above 15% capacity in TSA-E for six consecutive days.
TSA-E is the Trauma Service Area serving most of North Texas. If capacity stretches above 15% for seven consecutive days, businesses in the TSA region are subject to greater restrictions.
“What we hope is that people will comply, and again, it is the governor’s order, and cases are rising and people are dying, and I know that this has just, unfortunately, become such a politicized thing, which is certainly something it never should have become,” said Fuller.
Fuller said code enforcement will check on establishments if there are complaints, but he is hoping personal responsibility wins out as cases climb.
“What I hope and encourage everyone to do, regardless of what your belief is, follow the guidelines. Follow the CDC. Do it for your fellow residents, do it for the businesses. Everyone is pro-business. Do what you can,” said Fuller.
In Plano, the Department of Environmental Health and Sustainability handles complaints regarding capacity and other social distancing issues.
“The good news is that we have established relationships with all of these facilities and so they know us, and they know that we want to partner with them, and it's made compliance, really, actually great within the City of Plano. We haven't had any major issues,” said Rachel Patterson the director of environmental health.
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We reached out to Collin County Judge Chris Hill about how the county would handle new restrictions. He sent the following statement:
“Our team at Collin County monitors the county and regional hospitalization rates daily, and we are paying particular attention to the current trend in light of Gov. Abbott's executive order and the impact on our local hospitals," Hill said.
