Statement from Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, Addressing the public regarding the emergency regulations I signed last night to help the City of Dallas in the fight against COVID-19. The regulations extend Dallas County’s latest orders to all of the City of Dallas and require hospitals to report bed and ventilator capacity.
This data will be made available to the public. As I said when we required COVID-19 testing data from all labs in the city, transparency and facts are key to slowing the spread of this virus.
“We stand with our medical community. The leaders of hospitals in Dallas have been critically important sounding boards for me in the last few weeks, and we rely heavily on our front-line healthcare workers, including our paramedics, our nurses, and our doctors,” Johnson said in a news release. “They act heroically every day. We need them more than ever to get through this, and we will do all we can to help them during these difficult times.”
With the data that hospitals provide, we can effectively manage our resources in the event of a surge in hospitalizations. We can also give the public a better idea of the severity of this pandemic as we see more cases requiring hospitalization.
— Mayor Eric Johnson (@Johnson4Dallas) March 31, 2020
Challenging days are ahead. The numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and the numbers of unemployed people are both rising quickly. This insidious virus will test us. But it will not break us. Dallas is strong and resilient. And we will bounce back from all of this.
Johnson said he will not shut down open space parks and trails at this time. However, if physical distancing continues to be an issue at the parks, then he’ll revisit the idea.
“Not everyone in this city has a backyard to go out into…. We need your help with compliance,” Johnson says.
“Please keep your distance so we can keep these city amenities open as long as we can,” he said.
The two testing sites for COVID-19 in Dallas have new hours from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m each day. The sites were open until 8 p.m.
The locations are:
American Airlines Center, Parking Lot E, 2500 Victory Plaza
Ellis Davis Field House, 9191 S Polk St.
To qualify for a test, people must have the following symptoms:
Shortness of breath
Cough
Must show a temperature of 99.6 or higher
