Health leaders introduced a new metric for the COVID-19 risk-based guidelines. Why now?

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Roughly a week and a half after Austin-Travis County hit the average number of hospitalizations to qualify for Stage 2 risk-based guidelines, health leaders announced the area would stay in Stage 3 because of a metric that shows how prevalent community spread is in Travis County.Health leaders said they were already considering community transmission rate in their decision to move to a new stage, but they haven't introduced that metric to the public until now.
Before Friday, the