AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Austin-Travis County health leaders are hosting a media Q&A Friday at 10:30 a.m.
During the briefing, the media will hear from Dr. Desmar Walkes, the local health authority, and Dr. Adrienne Sturrup, the interim director of Austin Public Health, among other officials.
We expect health leaders to talk about the progress Austin-Travis County has seen in overall case numbers and hospitalizations, though the number of people in area ICUs remains high. The briefing is also exactly a week from the start of ACL, which is expected to draw swarms of people to Austin.
The 7-day moving average of hospital admissions in Austin-Travis County, which largely impacts which risk-based guidelines the area falls in, has been within the Stage 4 threshold for three days. It dropped to 49 early this week from 55 last week. Anything below 50 drops the risk level into the Stage 4 threshold.
The 7-day moving average of admissions is at 44 as of Friday morning.
Health leaders have not officially declared the area to be in Stage 4 guidelines yet, and the website still shows the area is in Stage 5. Austin Public Health sent us the following statement earlier this week:
“While APH monitors the 7-day moving average of COVID-19 new hospital admissions as the primary key indicator for the Risk-Based Guidelines, additional key indicators, including positivity rate, the doubling time of new cases, and current ICU and ventilator patients, are monitored to determine the current staging. We will continue to evaluate these other data points to determine if/when Stage 4 will happen.”
Travis County has now surpassed 70% of the eligible population fully vaccinated. Still, Walkes has said our ICUs are over capacity. More people in our hospitals are coming from surrounding counties than was the case earlier in the pandemic, she said in a briefing before Austin City Council and Travis County Commissioners Tuesday.
We will live stream that briefing in this story and on KXAN's Facebook page. This story will also be updated shortly after the briefing.
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