AUSTIN, Texas -- For the fifth day in a row, Texas hit a record high of people hospitalized due to COVID-19. The state reported 2,518 in the hospital Tuesday.

The state's daily case count also reached a new peak with 2,622 new cases, and that was before a backlog of 1,476 cases from the prison system were factored in to the total.

Still Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas is prepared to handle it – for now.

“The increased capacity of hospital beds, it does raise concerns, but as shown today, there is no reason to be alarmed,” he said during a news conference in Austin. “There are thousands of hospital beds that are available as we speak right now. And then there is the ability to surge even more hospital beds if it were ever to be needed.”

The state is reporting close to 15,000 available beds.

But one of Gov. Abbott's medical advisers on safely reopening the economy says with the spike in cases and hospitalizations, it's time to think about pulling back on reopening. He says that's particularly the case in more metro areas.

“Different things are happening in different parts of the state. In the, especially the metropolitan areas where we're seeing very rapid case growth, a pullback, not a stop, but a pullback or a pause in capacity for restaurants and some of these other steps would help in those regions and in slowing down the case spread,” said Dr. Mark McClellan, who’s also a former FDA Commissioner under President George W. Bush and now works as a health policy expert at Duke University.

McClellan says taking steps now will help the trends change. He reiterated the need to increase testing and added enforcement actions against businesses going beyond capacity would help slow the case count.

In seeking to explain the upward trend, Gov. Abbott pointed to temporary spikes in isolated areas and suggested young people aren't taking the virus seriously enough.

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission did just warn bars and restaurants they could lose their licenses for 30 days if they don't follow state guidelines.

Click the video link above to watch our full interview with Dr. McClellan.