EL PASO, Texas – El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego on Wednesday announced a curfew for the Christmas and New Years holidays over coronavirus concerns.
This curfew will run from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. from December 23 to 26 and again from December 30 to January 4.
Residents of El Paso who commute to work, to the store for essentials or to seek treatment will be exempt from the curfew, which is primarily aimed at social gatherings.
“We’re going to be extremely focused on the bad actors,” the judge said of the plans to enforce the curfew.
The new curfew is similar to the one imposed by the judge during the Thanksgiving period.
After Thanksgiving, El Paso didn’t experience the kind of spike it saw in virus cases after the summer vacation. The judge said he believed the Thanksgiving curfew played a role in preventing a virus outbreak after the holidays.
“We are not out of the woods yet,” the judge stressed as he was flanked by health workers showing their support for his curfew decree, noting that currently 24% of all local hospitalizations are the result of the virus.
He also said the county morgue currently holds 295 bodies, most of those Covid-19 victims, due to the backlog at funeral homes resulting from the number of deaths from the El Paso virus.
You can see the courthouse judge’s full remarks in the video player below.
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