Austin-Travis County ditches stages, adopts CDC's COVID-19 risk guidelines

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- The local health authority announced Tuesday morning that Austin Public Health is ditching its current COVID-19 risk-based guidelines system and aligning itself with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) model instead.

It will now follow the CDC's low, medium and high risk-based model which only recommends masking for people who are up-to-date on vaccines in the high-risk stage.

Roughly 100 COVID-19 cases linked to SXSW

Travis County is currently in the low-risk category, under that new model, which does not recommend masking for anyone.

The new risk-based guidelines were presented to Travis County commissioners and Austin City Council on March 29, 2022 (Courtesy: Austin Public Health)

Here are the recommendations for people who are up-to-date with their COVID-19 vaccines and don't have underlying conditions: 

• Low: Precautions optional.
• Medium: Precautions optional when gathering, dining and shopping. Mask when social distancing is not possible. 
• High: Use precautions when gathering, dining and shopping. 

Here are the recommendations for people who are at-risk:

• Low: Precautions optional when gathering, dining and shopping.  
• Medium: Use precautions when gathering, dining and shopping.  
• High: Use precautions when gathering, dining and shopping. 

"Likewise we are going to be updating our dashboard and it will show our current daily hospital numbers to help the community understand what's happening on a day-to-day basis locally," Dr. Desmar Walkes, the local health authority, said. That dashboard will move back to focusing on hospitalizations instead of on other metrics which were introduced during the omicron surge, like community transmission rate.

BA.2, an omicron subvariant, is gaining ground in Texas

That data will still be used by local health leaders, however, and the CDC's model uses similar metrics to what was being used locally to determine risk such as the 7-day moving average of new COVID-19 admissions per 100,000 people and the percent of staff inpatient beds by COVID-19 patients. You can read more about how levels are determined on the CDC website.

You can also use the CDC's COVID-19 county check tool here:

Austin-Travis County moved to Stage 2 COVID-19 risk-based guidelines at the beginning of March. At that time, health leaders hinted at the possible shift to the CDC guidelines.