Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday criticized President Joe Biden for calling his decisions to lift Covid 19 restrictions and mandates earlier this week “Neanderthal thinking” and blaming the state’s ongoing outbreak on immigrants without documents.
Abbott’s comments come after his widely criticized decision Tuesday to repeal most of the state’s Covid-19 restrictions, including a nationwide mandate. Businesses in Texas will be allowed to open “100%” from March 10, he said. The Government of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, did about the same time.
Biden on Wednesday accused the governors of what he said was a “big mistake” and added that “the last thing we need is the Neanderthal thinking.”
Abbott told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the comment “is not the kind 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 government “refused to test them on the virus”.
“The Biden government released immigrants in South Texas who exposed Texans to Covid. Some of the people were put on buses, which took Covid to other states in the United States,” Abbott told CNBC. “This is a Neanderthal approach to dealing with the Covid situation.”
While the Republican governor did not provide details, Telemundo reported Tuesday that some migrants released by Border Patrol in the city of Brownsville, Texas, subsequently tested positive for Covid-19. Since the city began testing on January 25, 108 migrants have tested positive for Covid-19, which according to the report is 6.3% of all who took a test.
“The Biden government must stop importing Covid into our country,” Abbott said.
Top U.S. health officials have repeatedly urged countries not to lift Covid-19 restrictions, as nationwide coronavirus cases and deaths stand still and highly communicable variants threaten to “hijack” the recent decline in infections.
However, Abbott defends his decision to lift the state’s mask requirements, claiming that Texans already know that ‘the safe standard, among other things, is to wear a mask’.
“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 necessary. Texas reported a daily average of about 7,265 new cases in 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 released by the Johns Hopkins University was established.
However, new infections have started to increase across the state, with the daily average of new cases rising by almost 13% compared to a week ago.
Abbott said most of the state’s coronavirus is driven by the holiday through indoor gatherings, not restaurants and other businesses. The recently lifted restrictions “are not really that transformative” because the state’s mask mandate has not been applied and that businesses were already 75% of capacity, he said.
“Maybe it seems to people in New York that it’s a big difference,” Abbott said.
Will Feuer of CNBC contributed to this report.