BG Reads | News You Need to Know (August 17, 2021)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
EMS Association president says medics are ‘exhausted’ and ‘hopeless’ as Covid cases surge (KUT)
Emergency medical services in Austin are facing a huge crunch as COVID-19 cases surge.
Selena Xie, the president of the Austin EMS Association, said EMS workers are significantly understaffed at a time when their call volume is skyrocketing.
“Medics are just so tired and exhausted and, in a lot of ways, hopeless,” Xie said.
She said she can’t remember how many emails she has sent in the past year telling people to "hang in there" through the first COVID wave, the ice storm and now the delta variant.
“I don’t know how long many of our medics can do that,” Xie said. “I mean we are seeing record numbers of separations and early retirements, and it just doesn’t feel like the end is in sight.”
By July of this year, more people had left the department than in all of 2020. Xie said, coupled with the low pay for these jobs, medics are feeling hopeless because many of the COVID patients they are treating are unvaccinated and could have prevented their situation.
On top of everything, Xie told KUT on Friday that EMS’ call volume had increased 20% in just the past two weeks… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin ISD says mask mandate is still on following Texas Supreme Court comments (Community Impact)
Austin ISD's mask requirement will be in effect on the first day school, the district confirmed Aug. 15, following actions from the Texas Supreme Court that reaffirmed Gov. Greg Abbott's ban on mask mandates by local governments and school districts.
"The city of Austin and Travis County have ordered masks be worn in all public buildings and schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Austin ISD is complying with that order and will keep the district’s mask requirement," the district said in a statement.
The Texas Supreme Court issued stay orders Aug. 15 against local mask mandates approved by district courts in Dallas and Bexar counties. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton requested other entities with similar mask orders, including Travis County, be subject to the same decision. However, the Supreme Court on Aug. 16 denied Paxton's request.
Paxton addressed an Aug. 16 follow-up letter to other entities that have received restraining orders from lower courts blocking Abbott's executive order GA-38 and enabling mask mandates. He requested those entities comply with G-38 and rescind their mandates by 4 p.m. Aug. 16.
"We are confident your order will inevitably be stayed by the Supreme Court and that any subsequent relief ordered by a trial court will ultimately be reversed," Paxton wrote… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Save Austin Now seeks court order forcing Austin to rewrite ballot language on police staffing (Austin American-Statesman)
Save Austin Now, the political action committee that forced a citywide election on a proposal to hire more police officers, is asking the courts to order City Council members to rewrite "misleading" ballot language before Proposition A heads to voters in November.
In petitions filed Monday at the Texas Supreme Court and late Sunday at the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals, Save Austin Now argued that the City Council had no discretion to use its own language to describe the proposition.
Instead, Save Austin Now argued, the City Charter required political leaders to adopt the caption on petitions that were signed by more than 20,000 registered voters, forcing an election by citizen initiative.
"This is an important lawsuit that stands up for all Austin voters and their right to petition for new ordinances," said lawyer Bill Aleshire, a former top official for Travis County… (LINK THE FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Fort Bliss in El Paso could receive thousands of Afghan refugees as Taliban topples government, Pentagon says (Texas Tribune)
Fort Bliss in El Paso will be the destination for potentially thousands of Afghan refugees, Pentagon officials said Monday during a press conference to address the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“As we prepare for even more arrivals, [U.S. Northern Command] and the U.S. Army are working to create additional capacity to support refugee relocation in the U.S., including temporary sights under assessment at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Camp McCoy, Wisconsin,” Department of Defense official Gary Reed said.
“There may be other sites identified if services are needed, additional capacity is needed,” he added. “At this point we’re looking to establish 20 [thousand] to 22,000 spaces. We can expand if we need to.”
Afghanistan’s government collapsed in recent days amid the withdrawal of American troops after nearly 20 years in the country. The Taliban has taken control of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital city, which led to a crush of civilians at the Kabul airport desperate to leave the country on Monday.
Texas has a contentious recent history when it comes to receiving refugees. In early 2020, Gov. Greg Abbott informed the U.S. State Department that the state would not be participating in its refugee resettlement program, after the Trump administration allowed governors to opt out… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
San Antonio school district teachers and staff required to get COVID-19 vaccinations (Texas Tribune)
The San Antonio Independent School District will require all staff to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, its superintendent, Pedro Martinez, said in a letter to staff Monday. It is believed to be the first large Texas school district to implement a vaccine requirement for its employees.
The move comes as Gov. Greg Abbott and state officials continue fighting legal battles over the options local governments have to mitigate the pandemic.
About 90% of San Antonio ISD employees are vaccinated, Martinez said in his letter to staff. Employees who have not yet received vaccine shots are required to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 15.
As part of his reasoning, Martinez cited the community’s high positivity rate — the share of people getting tested who are confirmed to have infections.
“We strongly believe that the best path forward as a school district is to require all staff to become vaccinated against COVID-19. And the timing is now,” Martinez said. “This is a profound moment where we can choose to lead by example.”
The announcement came the same day a Bexar County judge ruled that local officials can proceed with requiring masks in schools. That new temporary injunction is part of an ongoing legal challenge to Abbott’s statewide ban on mask mandates that the Texas Supreme Court allowed to continue Sunday when it overruled previous moves by lower courts that had also cleared the way for local mandates.
Martinez announced in a separate letter to San Antonio ISD parents Monday that the district would be issuing a mask mandate, “effective immediately.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
The Biden administration may recommend COVID boosters after 8 months (NPR)
Fully vaccinated Americans could be rolling up their sleeves for another dose of the coronavirus vaccine as soon as next month.
The Biden administration is close to advising fully vaccinated Americans get COVID-19 booster shots eight months after their last vaccine. A source familiar with the discussions among administration health experts said this recommendation could come as soon as this week.
The plan was first reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The boosters would be intended to protect against the highly contagious delta variant, which has caused caseloads in the U.S. to surge. A third shot for those who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines would also help with any waning effectiveness of the current shots.
The source familiar with these discussions said administering the boosters could begin as early as mid to late September, pending authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.
The New York Times reports officials expect those who received the one dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine will need a booster shot as well. The government is waiting on recommending a second dose of Johnson & Johnson until it receives results from the company's two-dose clinical trial… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
DeSantis backpedals on threat to withhold salaries of defiant school officials (Politico)
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration backed down from its threat to withhold school officials’ salaries if they resist his anti-mask rule, saying instead that the defiant officials should be responsible for the “consequences of their decisions.”
The move by the governor’s office represents a tacit acknowledgement that it legally can’t take away the salaries of school board members and others despite previously threatening to. DeSantis could levy hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines against school districts for disobeying his mask orders, but it would be up for the board leaders themselves to cut their own pay.
“The entire school district community shouldn’t suffer just because a few activist, anti-science school board members want to impose overreaching mandates on every student,” said DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw in a statement to POLITICO.
In her statement, Pushaw said the education officials in question “are not on the state payroll, so this form of penalty is the most narrowly tailored approach that the state can take.”
The Miami Herald was first to report that the DeSantis administration was tempering its threat.
DeSantis and local school board members have been squabbling over mask rules in recent weeks as campuses across Florida began welcoming students for the fall semester. The Republican governor opposes blanket mask mandates for students despite the Delta variant of Covid-19 that is sweeping the state, and threatened to take away funding from districts as well as salaries of officials. Several districts, including Broward County — the second largest school district in the state — stated they would push forward with mask mandates for all students regardless of the consequences… (LINK TO STORY)