Austin Scales Back to Stage 4 Coronavirus Alert Level

AUSTIN, TX — Austin and Travis County officials on Monday announced a move to Stage 4 of the Austin Public Health COVID-19 Risk-Based Guidelines, one level below the highest alert level yielding the highest restrictions.

Despite the lowered level, health officials stressed, "...it remains imperative that residents continue to practice all necessary precautions to further reduce the COVID-19 positivity rate." To that end, residents should continue wearing protective face coverings, practice physical distancing and wash their hands often.

Stage 4 recommendations include the following:

• Higher-risk individuals (those over the age of 65 and those who have chronic medical conditions) should stay home, except for essential trips such as buying groceries or seeking medical care.
• Lower-risk individuals should avoid social gatherings, any gatherings greater than 10 people, and non-essential travel. 
• Businesses and restaurants voluntarily operate at a reduced capacity of 25 percent to 50 percent.
• Schools voluntarily limit attendance at sporting events to players, coaches, and parents.

The Risk-Based Guidelines are not changes to local orders and rules or regulations for businesses, health officials noted. Rather, they are guidelines for individual actions and behaviors based on levels of risk of exposure in the community. The risk level recommendations are different for those who are at higher risk for severe complications and death from COVID-19, officials added.

While Austin Public Health monitors the seven-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, officials explained. Health district officials noted that all of these indicators are moving in the right direction. Additionally, modeling provided by the University of Texas also indicates an improving COVID-19 situation in the community, officials added.

“As the pace of vaccinations hopefully continues to rise and people continue to stay safe, we can keep moving this community in a positive direction,” Austin Public Health Director Stephanie Hayden-Howard said in a prepared statement.

City and county health leaders moved Austin-Travis County to Stage 5 for the first time during the pandemic on Dec. 23, 2020. People gathering over the holidays played a significant role in the case surge, and consequently an increase in severe illness and death. Austin Public Health is constantly monitoring how major events impact COVID-19 cases in the community and should be able to observe how the Super Bowl impacted our area in the next 14 days, officials said.

“Particularly given the presence of a more contagious variant in our community, we would like individuals to continue to take protective actions,” Mark Escott, Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority, said in a prepared statement. “We have been successful because of the choices the community has made to be safe and follow the data-driven risk guidelines.”

For the latest information and updates, visit the city's COVID-19 Information portal.