As of March 24, 2020 the state of Texas health care department, has confirmed 715 positive cases of COVID-19, 11 reported deaths and 11,167 people tested in the state. Governor Greg Abbott hosted a press release in Austin today after 65 members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus sent him a letter asking for a statewide stay-at-home order.

“There has now been multiple stay-at-homes or shelter-in-place orders where there are a lot of exceptions to them. If you look at the stay-at-home orders, they are fairly consistent with my executive order with one exception. My executive order allows people to gather in groups of no more than 10 at a time. On my travel to this location today I was surprised at how many vehicles I saw on the road. It is clear to me that we may not be achieving the level of compliance that is needed that’s why I said before I remain flexible in my statewide standard. I look at data multiple times a day I get advice from the medical professionals multiple times a day and we will continue to evaluate based upon the data whether or not there needs to be a heightened standard and stricter enforcement,” governor Greg Abbott said.

Governor Abbott issued an executive order today for all hospitals in the state to submit daily reports on hospital bed capacity to the state of Texas health department. It also requires all healthcare providers to submit daily reports of COVID-19 tests.

“We are increasing medical capacity. The doctors and nurses and other medical personnel we have in the state are the soldiers on the front line of this war against COVID-19.” Abbott said. “We need more soldiers on that front line; as a result we are enlisting every doctor, every nurse, every medical personnel that we can find. There may be some who are retired, there may be some who are still in nursing school who qualify under my executive order, there may be some who are from another state who can come into the state of Texas and provide your services here.

If you are someone of if you know of someone in the medical sector who can help us out in assuring that were doing all we can to respond to COVID-19 be sure and let us know.” Abbott said. If you know of someone who wants to volunteer to help, please go to www.texas.gov and at the top of the page will be a site you can click on to volunteer time or supplies.

“The state of Texas is competing with other states for supplies and competing with the federal government for supplies. There is more demand than there are supplies; the good news is the federal government is racing to increase the supplies. That’s why you are seeing an increase in the number of testing kits, collection kits, as well as personal protection equipment (PPE) and ventilators.” Abbott said.

Since COVID-19 was declared as a pandemic stocks have fallen by more than 20%. This is the worst the stock market has been since the 2008 crash.

“If the goal is to get the economy going the best thing that we can do is to get COVID-19 behind us. We must bend the curve on the growth of the corona virus in Texas. As soon as we do that the economy will come roaring back.” Abbott said.