COVID-19 TX

A glimpse of the 2021 AARP Texas legislative agenda, which includes advocacy related to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities and a host of consumer-related issues.

As community spread decreases, Gov. Greg Abbott amended visitation rules for long-term care facilities. Associate Commissioner Michelle Dionne-Vahalik spells out what these changes mean for visiting loved ones.

In a Facebook Live conversation with AARP Texas Director Tina Tran, Alexa Schoeman of the Texas Office of the Long-term Care Ombudsman discusses how to register and cast your ballot in a long-term care facility in Texas.

A commentary by AARP Texas State Director Tina Tran

Many Texans are using telemedicine for the first time. The pandemic has underscored disparities in access to health care and broadband internet.

With nearly half of all deaths in Texas related to COVID-19 occurring among nursing home residents and staff, advocates at AARP Texas are encouraging those with loved ones in long-term care facilities to check regularly on the loved ones’ health and wellbeing.

The following is a report from Roz Brown of the Public News Service (TX):

Pets are a lifeline for social interaction during the pandemic. But the uptick in time spent with our pets is a disruption to their schedules.

Austin’s public transportation system -- Capital Metro -- is edging closer toward a possible citywide referendum this fall on a transit-expansion plan intended to ease congestion and to help Austin contend with an expected doubling of its population over the next 25 years.

Stress – or the body’s response to any demand – may not be all that bad in small doses. It can help us get through a short-term crisis, such as the first few days of a pandemic. But chronic stress -- the ongoing kind, such as weeks’-long interruptions to our normal rhythms due to the coronavirus outbreak -- is the stuff that can be a mental killer.