ABILENE, TX – The City of Abilene is extending their disaster declaration another week and also announced plans to start publishing COVID-19 testing numbers online.
During an emergency city council meeting Monday morning, Mayor Anthony Williams made the decision to extend his declaration.
It now bans the public from gathering in crowds of more than 10 people for at least the next 7 days.
The Mayor will revisit the declaration once a week while the COVID-19 crisis continues.
City Manager Robert Hanna also spoke during the meeting, saying the City of Abilene, which still has 0 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of March 23, will start publishing their testing numbers online.
He says that although all the results have been negative so far, several tests are still pending.
The City of Abilene also talked about a measure that would give them more time to respond to public information requests.
Typically, public entities have 10 days to respond to requests, but during this time of disaster, that time limitation would be suspended, if the measure is approved.
It was not voted into effect during Monday’s emergency meeting. It was pulled from the agenda then discussed.
Nearly two dozen other entities have already signed up for the time limit suspension in the State of Texas.
