Pflugerville To Discuss Coronavirus Preparedness Measures

PFLUGERVILLE, TX — The Pflugerville City Council has scheduled an emergency meeting to discuss emergency preparedness as it relates to the new coronavirus outbreak, officials said on Friday.

The March 13 meeting set to convene at 5 p.m. will cover a wide range of topics tied to tactics on inhibiting potential contagion spread — city service, preparedness, social distancing and necessary precautions related to the new coronavirus scourge that has since been renamed COVID-19.

The respiratory ailment dubbed COVID-19 is caused by a member of the coronavirus family that’s a close cousin to the SARS and MERS viruses that have caused outbreaks in the past.

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"The City of Pflugerville is working closely with area agencies including Austin Public Health and Travis County Emergency Services District #2 to take necessary precautions related to the virus," city officials said in a prepared statement. "Council will discuss continuity of city services."

Watch emergency COVID-19 meeting here

The meeting will be recorded and streamed live on PfTV and can be viewed online at www.pflugervilletx.gov/pftv.

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Pflugerville's actions comes as Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday declared the new coronavirus as a statewide public health disaster, saying Texas is on the verge of being able to significantly ramp up its testing capacity, as The Texas Tribune and multiple other media outlets reportd.

Abbott said in a prepared statement there have been 220 Texans tested by either a state public lab or by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlana. There are another 75 Texans being tested currently, the governor added. On Friday, he added, the state's testing capacity was 272 people per day — a number that will expand into the thousands by next week.

City council's action also comes on the heels of confirmation by Austin Public Health officials of the two first COVID-19 cases to emerge in Travis County. Health officials staged an early-morning press conference on Friday in providing details, saying the patients are a man in his 60s with epidimiological ties to Houston and a woman in her 30s that was under monitoring by Montgomery County officials.