Texas government Greg Abbott on Thursday criticized President Joe Biden for calling his decisions to lift the Covid-19 restrictions and calling the mandates “Neanderthal thinking” earlier this week and blaming the ongoing outbreak of the stands to undocumented immigrants.
Abbott’s comments come after his widely criticized decision Tuesday to repeal most of the state’s Covid-19 restrictions, including a statewide mask mandate. Texas corporations are allowed to open “100%” from March 10, he said. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves made a similar move about the same time.
Biden on Wednesday condemned the governors for saying it was a “big mistake” and added that “the last thing we need is Neanderthals thinking.”
Abbott told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the comment “was not the kind of word a president should use” and blamed the spread of the coronavirus among immigrants crossing the southern border. The Republican governor said the Biden administration “has refused to test them” for the virus.
“The Biden administration has released immigrants in South Texas who exposed Texans to Covid. Some of those people have been put on buses and taken Covid to other states in the United States,” Abbott told CNBC. “That’s a Neanderthal-style approach to dealing with the Covid situation.”
Although the Republican governor did not provide details, Telemundo reported on Tuesday that some migrants released by Border Patrol in the town of Brownsville, Texas, subsequently tested positive for Covid-19. Since the city began testing on Jan. 25, 108 migrants have tested positive for Covid-19, which is 6.3% of all those who took a test, according to the report.
“The Biden government must stop importing Covid into our country,” Abbott said.
Top US health officials have repeatedly urged states not to lift Covid-19 restrictions as nationwide coronavirus and death cases stall and highly transmissible variants threaten to “hijack” the country’s recent drop in infections.
However, Abbott defended his decision to lift the state’s mask requirements, claiming that Texans already know that “wearing a mask, among other things, is the safe standard.”
“Do they really need the state to tell them what they already know for their own personal behavior?” Abbott told CNBC.
The governor added that the state’s coronavirus infections are “at a four-month low,” and that Texas hospitals are ready to treat an influx of patients if needed. Texas reports a daily average of about 7,265 new cases in the past week, down from the peak of more than 20,400 daily cases the state reported in January, according to a CNBC analysis of data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
However, new infections are starting to creep through the state again, with new cases growing on average daily by nearly 13% compared to a week ago.
Abbott said most of the state’s coronavirus spread during the holidays was caused by indoor gatherings, not restaurants and other businesses. The recently lifted restrictions “aren’t really that transformative” because the state’s mask mandate was not enforced and companies already had 75% capacity, he said.
“It may seem to people in New York that this is a big difference,” said Abbott.
– CNBC’s Will Feuer contributed to this report.