As School Year Nears, Fort Bend County Raises COVID Threat Level

Even though Fort Bend County has one of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rate of all Texas counties, Fort Bend County Judge KP George announced Tuesday that the Delta variant of the coronavirus has caused local virus metrics to spike enough for him to raise the county’s COVID threat level from yellow to orange, asking all county residents to minimize contact with others and imploring folks to mask up and get vaccinated if they haven’t already.

“If you’re not vaccinated, please,” George begged, “participate in your own rescue.”

Harris County similarly raised its coronavirus threat level last week, citing Delta’s spread throughout the Houston area’s unvaccinated population. The troubling rise of the Delta variant over the past few weeks has led to not only threat level shifts, but to increased pleas from public health experts such as Baylor College of Medicine’s Dr. Peter Hotez for the unvaccinated to get shots pronto.

To help entice hesitant locals who still haven’t taken any of the widely available, highly-effective COVID-19 vaccines, the Houston Health Department announced earlier this week it would start offering gift cards as incentives to folks who get fully vaccinated at several of the department’s local vaccination sites.

Anyone who gets fully vaccinated within 42 days of getting their first shot (or opts to take the one shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine) at any of the following locations in the timeframes listed below will receive a $25 gift card from either Walmart, Target, Old Navy, Ross, Amazon, Shell, Walgreens or METRO Houston as long as supplies last, according to the city health department:

Acres Home Multi-Service Center, 6719 W. Montgomery Rd.
Mondays, Wednesday, Fridays: 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

Hiram Clarke Multi-Service Center, 3810 W. Fuqua St.
Tuesdays: 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

La Nueva Casa de Amigos Health Center, 1809 North Main St.
Mondays/Thursdays: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays: 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Magnolia Multi-Service Center, 7037 Capitol St.
Thursdays: 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Saturdays: 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Northside Health Center, 8504 Schuller Rd.
Mondays/Thursdays: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays: 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Sharpstown Health Services, 6201 Bonhomme Rd.
Mondays/Thursdays: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays: 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Southwest Multi-Service Center, 6400 High Star Dr.
Saturdays: 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Sunnyside Health Center, 4605 Wilmington St.
Mondays/Thursdays: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays: 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

“We are at a pivotal point in the fight against this deadly virus,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a statement Monday. “Positive cases and hospitalizations are increasing, primarily among the unvaccinated, despite vaccines being free and readily available. It is our hope the new incentive offered by the Houston Health Department will encourage people to take their best shot and help save lives in the process.”

Hotez and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control are also recommending universal use of face masks in indoor public spaces — including schools — to slow Delta’s spread given new data showing that even vaccinated people who get sick from Delta (which is still extremely unlikely) can spread the virus just as much as unvaccinated folks infected by the variant.

“I’m particularly concerned about the unvaccinated adolescents, because all of this is happening before school even begins for in-person classrooms,” Hotez said. “And that, if our past experience serves as well, means it’s going to act as an accelerant.”

“Things are about to get even worse as schools start to open,” he continued. “So if we’re really committed to in-person classes, this means in the middle schools and high schools, all of the teachers, all of the staff, the bus drivers, all of the adolescents need to get vaccinated and wear masks in the classroom as well,” Hotez said. “And for the little kids, we don’t have vaccines. Little kids under the age of 12 are not eligible yet, [so] our best backstop is masking.”

Despite these warnings, Texas still finds itself under Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order issued back in May that bans mask mandates in public schools. Abbott also issued a new, more expansive executive order on masking last week that forbids “[any] government entity, including a county, city, school district, and public health authority,” from issuing mandates that “require any person to wear a face covering.”

The new data on Delta plus the troubling rise in local COVID-19 hospitalizations and new daily positive cases across the Houston area has led both Fort Bend County and the City of Houston to require county and city employees to wear face masks on the job effective Wednesday, moves that seemingly fly in the face of Abbott’s latest mask mandate.

Following a petition drive started Saturday by Fort Bend County parents asking Fort Bend ISD to offer virtual learning options for the upcoming school year (which had over 2,100 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon) despite the Legislature’s failure to approve funding for remote classes, George sent a letter to Abbott Monday asking the governor to rescind his executive order around mask mandates in schools so that even if remote classes wouldn’t be a possibility, Fort Bend schools could at least enforce masking on their campuses.

Anshumi Jhaveri, a soon-to-be senior at Fort Bend ISD’s Dulles High School, spoke during George’s Tuesday press conference to express her anger toward Abbott for blocking public schools from implementing mask requirements.

“In two weeks, I and my peers will be returning to in-person learning, and I don’t think i could be more anxious about that fact,” Jhaveri said.

“My anxiety is made worse,” she said, “by knowing that while I am vaccinated and I choose to wear a mask, people sitting directly next to me may not, and their decision directly impacts my health.”

“I have to wonder, as a young person observing our state government, does Gov. Abbott care about me and the well being of students in our great state of Texas?” Jhaveri asked.

“I have to wonder, as a young person observing our state government, does Gov. Abbott care about me and the well being of students in our great state of Texas?” – Anshumi Jhaveri, Dulles High School rising senior

Delta’s spread has led Rice University to reverse course on some of its coronavirus restrictions — the university announced Tuesday it is reimplementing its indoor mask requirement for the upcoming semester (which the school is allowed to do since its a private institution), and would soon require even fully-vaccinated students, staff and faculty to get tested for COVID-19 at least once every two weeks. Unvaccinated people coming to Rice’s campus regularly will be required to get tested twice a week.

The recent spike in local COVID-19 hospitalizations comes just as more Houston area medical facilities have announced new vaccine mandates for their workforces, following the lead of Houston Methodist’s first-in-the-nation decision to require vaccinations. On Monday, Memorial Hermann Hospital announced that its 29,000 employees (around 83 percent of whom have already been vaccinated) had until October 9 to be fully vaccinated. Managers and hospital higher-ups only have until September 11.

According to Memorial Hermann’s President Dr. David Callendar, any employee who doesn’t get a religious or medical exemption and remains unvaccinated by the above deadlines “will be deemed to have voluntarily resigned” from their job at the hospital chain. Memorial Hermann is now the third local medical institution to put forth a vaccine mandate; Baylor College of Medicine announced its vaccine requirement for workers last week.

During George’s press conference, St. Martin’s Lutheran Church Pastor Will Starkweather of Sugar Land plead directly to Fort Bend County residents of all faiths to do their part and get vaccinated to protect themselves and their most vulnerable neighbors. Failing to do so, Starkweather argued, is nothing more than “childish egotism.”

“We have vaccines available to further protect us from the threat of this disease, but so much of the conversation I’ve heard recently has been around ‘my civil liberties,’ that we cannot be made to take measures that we do not wish to take,” Starkweather said. “And I will tell you, friends, this is true. We have the freedom to decide what to do with our own bodies. We have the right right to refuse vaccination.”

“But to insist on our liberties without fulfilling our responsibilities is not only dangerous, it is childish,” he continued.