AUSTIN, TEXAS >> Texas health authorities reported a record 50 new deaths related to the coronavirus today, as restaurants, retail stores and malls prepared to reopen across the state on Friday.

COVID-19 cases surged, with 1,033 new cases reported today, bringing the state’s total number of known cases to 28,087. The last time Texas saw an increase of more than 1,000 new cases was on April 10, the date Gov. Greg Abbott has previously pointed to as the height of the pandemic in Texas.

The surge in statewide deaths and cases come as Abbott loosens restrictions on certain businesses, allowing them to reopen their doors Friday at 25% capacity. In counties with five or fewer COVID-19 cases, those businesses can reopen at 50%.

The number of new cases and deaths have increased each day since Tuesday. Today, the total number of Texans who have died from the coronavirus reached 782.

Abbott today reiterated that his decision to allow some businesses to reopen was guided by “the best infectious disease doctors,” including Mark McClellan, a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner and U.S. Medicaid and Medicare administrator, and approved by Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator.

But the latest figures and guidelines from the White House and McClellan suggest that Texas isn’t quite ready to reopen.

A paper co-authored by McClellan, one of three medical advisers to Texas Department of State Health Services Commissioner John Hellerstedt, detailed a plan last month for individual states to reopen when they are “able to safely diagnose, treat, and isolate COVID-19 cases and their contacts.”

The report found that a state should only move toward reopening when it can meet four standards: Show a reduction in cases for at least 14 days, show that local hospitals can safely treat all patients that require hospitalization, test every person with COVID-19 symptoms and effectively track confirmed cases and those who they came into contact with, known as contact tracing.

In multiple interviews over the past week, McClellan said that Texas has not met all the benchmarks laid out in the paper.

McClellan told Texas Monthly Wednesday that the guidelines were “ideal conditions for reopening” and testing and contact tracing in Texas is not yet up to where it should be.

“So while those are our primary considerations, excess capacity in the health system was also important,” he said. “Texas at least (has) had relatively good experience with COVID-19. I certainly hope it stays that way.”

The Trump administration’s guidelines for reopening also recommend a downward trajectory of cases within a 14-day period or a decline of positive tests as a percentage of total tests within that same time period.

Abbott expressed confidence in several TV interviews today that it was the right time to begin to reopen the economy, also citing Texas’ low hospitalization rates, which have remained steady through April, and a declining percentage of positive tests.

“Earlier in the month of April, we had about 10% of people who were tested who were testing positive,” Abbott said in a interview with TV station KSAT. “As of today, that number is about 6%. So the positivity test rate is going down.”

Today, the Department of State Health Services reported 1,686 COVID-19 patients in Texas hospitals.

There are 19,342 available hospital beds and 6,262 ventillators statewide for coronavirus patients, according to state health figures.

A spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services did not respond to requests for comment today about the surge in cases and deaths.

Lauren Ancel Meyers, a University of Texas professor and the director of the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, said it’s difficult to draw immediate conclusions about much of the available data.

“There are issues with all of the different kinds of data we have right now,” she said, noting that most data gives health experts a snapshot of where the state was several weeks ago.

Mortality rates make it difficult to make real-time assessments because a COVID-19 patient doesn’t die until well after they’re infected, Meyers said.

Testing data can offer some information on who’s been infected and transmission in the past few days or in the last week. However, testing figures can provide an incomplete picture because testing capacity and testing priorities change on a daily basis and can change dramatically from city to city, Meyers said.

“Extensive testing data is important just for situational awareness,” she said. “Testing in conjunction with very rapid contact tracing and effective isolation of people who are infected, or possibly could’ve been infected, is absolutely going to be key to suppressing transmission.”

McClellan has said increased contact tracing will be the key to Texas eventually stopping the coronavirus in its tracks.

As he unveiled loosened restrictions for businesses, Abbott on Monday also announced plans to build a team of 4,000 contact tracers and said that Texas should soon have the ability to test 25,000 people each day for the coronavirus.

Testing numbers have been slowly increasing, with 15,510 new tests reported on today.

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