By Dylan McGuinness and Jasper Scherer STAFF WRITERS
Mayor Sylvester Turner announced Monday the city’s annual Thanksgiving parade is canceled, and he urged residents to avoid large gatherings of family or friends over the holiday as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations trend upward.
It marks the first time in the parade’s 71-year history it has been canceled.
“The increasing positivity rate and increasing hospitalizations are clearly a dangerous trend in the wrong direction, and we want to reverse course,” Turner said.
Houston’s test positivity rate is 7.9 percent, up from a low of 5 percent earlier this fall.
Instead, city officials said they will host a H-E-B-sponsored Thanksgiving distribution on Saturday, Nov. 21 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., or until they run out of food. The distribution will provide each car with groceries for preparing Thanksgiving meals at home. One prep kit will be given to each car.
“While this year’s parade will go dark, we are thankful for all that Houston has to offer and look forward to planning a spectacular 2021 parade,” city officials wrote on the parade’s website.
To learn more about the food distribution, or to sign up to volunteer, visit www.houstontx.gov/thanksgivingparade.
The city also is hosting its 42nd annual Superfeast event, which will disburse larger food baskets — with as much as 60 to 80 pounds of food — to families from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.
The event will be held at the George R. Brown Convention Center, though the walk-up and drive-up locations to retrieve the food will be outdoors.
City Wide Club, a nonprofit, and Houston First Corp., the city’s convention agency, run that event.