By BARBARA GREEN
editor@bowienewsonline.com
The Bowie City Council wants to get the local economy moving again and would like to jump right into phase two of the governor’s plan due to the low number of active COVID-19 cases.
Councilors debated the issue during its Monday night meeting. Mayor Bill Miller said we have to “open up our country,” and invited State Sen. Pat Fallon to comment via the video conference link.
Fallon said one death is too many, but at this point the predictions for much higher deaths and hospital needs have not come to pass in Texas so he believes it is time to start reopening.
“We have 21,000 hospital beds reserved for COVID-19 patients, 1,550 are occupied. We have capacity. Anyone who needed a bed or a ventilator had one. We are okay on personal protection equipment for medical personnel, but we are running low on gowns. Texas is one of the the least hit as the 40th high state with confirmed cases and 41st in deaths. We hunkered down, but it is time to get out of the foxhole and keep moving,” said Fallon.
He was enthusiastic about the governor’s plan, but said he would have liked to have seen it go a bit further adding they have a lot of questions to clarify. Governor Greg Abbott outlined his plan in a Monday press conference with phase one allowing all retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters and malls to reopen May 1 at 25 percent capacity.
This plan also outlined protocols for certain counties with five or fewer lab confirmed cases of the virus. Those counties may on an individualized basis, increase occupancy limits up to 50 percent for those retail categories listed in phase one. Montague County falls into this category and could jump immediately into phase two.

Read the full story in the mid-week Bowie News.