While the novel coronavirus is sweeping the country, Texas is one of the states whose businesses have been severely affected by the lockdown.
Texas has currently more than 19,500 confirmed cases, with 495 deaths and an estimated 5,706 people who have recovered. The authorities, in order to prevent an uncontrollable spread of the virus in the state, have forced businesses to shut down temporarily until it is safe to return to work.
However, the shutting down of certain businesses has affected others that depend on these people for their day-to-day work.
One of those small businesses affected by the shutdown is Julio Davalos’ family-owned dry cleaning shop in East Dallas.
“It’s been really, really slow,” Davalos told CBSDFW.
What one can see when entering Lili’s Cleaners, the Davalos family business is racks full of clean clothes that nobody has claimed. Julio understands that during this time of crisis and uncertainty for the future, people are trying to save money, even if this means that they won’t pay for services they had requested before the outbreak of the virus.
“I understand everybody’s trying to save their money, while they can. Until everything gets back to normal,” said Davalos.
It is heartbreaking to watch the man walking around his shop, browsing through the hangers, trying to remember the professions of the people who left their clothes to him for cleaning.
“She was a travel agent…. One of my insurance guys,” he recalls.
All of them, people who have been staying home lately, unable to go to work, which probably means that their income has been reduced, and therefore are looking for ways to save money as they are waiting for the next day.
Meanwhile, the discussion of whether, when and how the state- and the country consequently- is going to return to its normal function, has been going on lately. Governor Greg Abbott has been facing pressure to restart the Texas economy, while the virus has not been under control yet.
A few days ago, he announced the first phase of the plan, which will be taking place come May.
Experts warn that, although the social distancing measures that have been employed, along with other measures to slow down the spread of the virus, have worked so far, it could all be in danger if the country went back to normal at this point.
“There’s always a risk that we still could be very early in this,” said Dr John Carlo, former Dallas County Health Director and past president of the Dallas County Medical Society.
Carlo added that there would be a need for a dramatic increase in testing so that, if the numbers of infected went up again, they would know in near real-time and be able to isolate these cases, track those who have been in contact with them and work from there. However, he admits it is a challenging task.
“This has never been tried on such a large scale in a community of this size,” he said.
Over the next few weeks, more is to be announced about the procedure that is going to be followed regarding the reopening of the Texas economy. In the meantime, people like Davalos can only hope that better days are going to come for their businesses.
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