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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday slammed President Joe Biden for calling his decisions to lift Covid-19 restrictions and mask terms earlier this week “Neanderthal thinking” and blamed the ongoing epidemic in the state on undocumented immigrants.
Abbott’s comments follow his widely criticized decision on Tuesday to lift most of the state’s Covid-19 restrictions, including a statewide mask warrant. Texas businesses will be allowed to open “100%” as of March 10, he said. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves made a similar move around the same time.
Biden slammed the governors on Wednesday for what he called a “big mistake” and added that “the last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking.”
Abbott told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the comment was “not the type of word a president should use” and blamed the spread of the coronavirus on immigrants crossing the southern border. The Republican governor said the Biden administration had “refused to test them” for the virus.
“The Biden administration released immigrants in South Texas who exposed Texans to Covid. Some of these people were put on buses, taking this Covid to other states in the United States,” Abbott told CNBC . “It’s a Neanderthal-type approach to dealing with the Covid situation.”
Although the Republican governor did not provide details, Telemundo reported on Tuesday that some migrants released by the border patrol in the Texas town of Brownsville then tested positive for Covid-19. Since the city began testing on January 25, 108 migrants have tested positive for Covid-19, or 6.3% of all who have been tested, according to the report.
“The Biden administration must stop importing Covid into our country,” Abbott said.
Top U.S. health officials have repeatedly urged states not to lift Covid-19 restrictions as nationwide coronavirus cases and deaths stagnate and highly transmissible variants threaten to ‘hijack’ the recent decline in infections in the country.
However, Abbott defended his decision to lift the state’s mask requirements, saying Texans already know that “the safety standard, among other things, is to wear a mask.”
“Do they really need the state to tell them what they already know about their own personal behavior?” Abbott told CNBC.
The governor added that the state’s coronavirus infections are “at their lowest level in four months” and hospitals in Texas are ready to treat an influx of patients if needed. Texas is reporting a daily average of around 7,265 new cases over the past week, a drop from the peak of more than 20,400 daily cases reported by the state in January, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by the University. Johns Hopkins.
However, new infections have started to reappear statewide, with an average daily increase in new cases of nearly 13% from a week ago.
Abbott said most of the state’s coronavirus spread over the holidays was due to indoor gatherings, not restaurants and other businesses. The recently lifted restrictions “aren’t really transformative” because the state’s mask mandate was not enforced and companies were already at 75 percent of capacity, he said.
“Maybe to the people of New York it seems like a big difference,” Abbott said.
– CNBC’s Will Feuer contributed to this report.
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