South Main family,
The South Main COVID-19 Advisory Task Force continues to discuss plans and protocols for our eventual return to in-person gatherings.
Unfortunately, as you know, the COVID-19 situation in the Houston region has continued to deteriorate since the Task Force's June 27 update.
Last week, greater Houston averaged 1,776 new positive cases per day, compared to 962 the week preceding the June 27 update, and more than 4 times what was observed at the previous peak (week of April 6).
Perhaps even more troubling, we are near the all time peak of hospitalizations in Texas Medical Center institutions—while the new positive cases figure can be impacted by testing levels, hospitalizations is a more absolute indicator of COVID-19 prevalence.
Because of the prevalence of COVID-19 in our community, public officials both here locally and in Austin continue to call for Houstonians to remain at home as much as possible.
While there are some hints of positive signals in the data (decreasing positivity rates, slowing in the growth of new hospitalizations, for example), at this time we are not able to recommend a rescheduled date to resume small in-person gatherings of South Main community groups.
The Task Force will continue to monitor the data and hopes to offer a more positive update soon.
