In a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said that she expected that Harris and surrounding counties would likely have to start reimplementing occupancy restrictions for local businesses and halt non-essential elective surgical procedures, all thanks to Gov. Greg Abbott’s statewide order that tied reopenings to COVID-19 hospitalizations.
“Unless things change in the next few hours, unless there’s a 180-degree shift, we do sadly expect to cross that threshold, to cross that 15 percent for seven days, and to join the other regions that are now in a situation where they’re having to roll back the reopening,” Hidalgo said earlier on Tuesday.