Total cases of coronavirus in San Antonio have exceeded 110,000 since March, and the city is on the brink of new commercial restrictions as hospitals admit a growing number of CIVID-19 patients.
After a three-day coronavirus update due to Christmas, city officials registered 4,426 new infections and 1,000 people at local hospitals, up to 945, from Wednesday to Sunday.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg said in a statement: “The Covid-19 case continues to put a strain on our hospitals. “Please wear a mask when you are in public, maintain social distance and wash your hands frequently.”
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If Covid-1 patients participate in at least 15 percent of the total capacity of San Antonio’s trauma service hospitals for seven consecutive days, the local executive will force their executive to reduce the maximum capacity from 75 percent to 50 percent. Government Greg Abbott’s order, Nirenberg said.
The city is on its way to a seventh day on Monday, with coronavirus patients now accounting for 16.9 percent of the trauma service sector’s hospital capacity.
For the Sunday alone, 1,282 new cases were reported in the Metropolitan Health District. There were 1,102 on Thursday, 820 on Friday and 1,222 on Saturday. On Sunday, the city also added 999 backlog cases from more than two weeks ago. Since the epidemic began, 112,218 people in Baxter County have been infected with the virus.
Two new deaths were reported there on Sunday, and officials had previously added 29 unaccounted deaths, bringing the total death toll since March to 1,510.
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With 136 new hospital admissions in Covid-19 on Sunday, coronavirus patients now account for 27 percent of all patients at local hospitals, up from 18 percent two weeks earlier. The figure has nearly tripled in the last six weeks.
There are 299 coronavirus patients in intensive care, up from 290 on Wednesday, and 159 patients using a ventilator to breathe, an increase of 152 on Wednesday.
In San Antonio and across the country, the number of daily cases has been increasing since October. This week, the U.S. has surpassed a total of 19 million cases and 330,000 deaths. The most recent 4 million cases have come in the last three weeks alone.
In Baxter County, more than 30,000 cases have been identified in the past month, about 30 percent of the total.
The seven-day rolling average of new cases is now 1,294, the highest since the onset of the epidemic. A month ago, the average was 728.
San Antonio has expanded its testing efforts to identify new cases more quickly. In the past nine weeks, more than 2,050,000 people have visited city testing sites, more than in the previous 23 weeks combined and excluding tests conducted by private providers.
More than 54,500 people were tested at city-run locations last week, the highest in a week since the epidemic began. It was the second consecutive week that a record number of people tested.
But more comprehensive testing does not necessarily lead to a surge in cases; Baxter County’s test positivity rate has also been trending higher since early October. The rate rose to 14.4 per cent from 12.5 per cent last week. The figure’s route has been designated “serious” by city standards, and health officials expect it to rise again in the coming weeks, as it did after Thanksgiving.
The vaccine is only available to front-line health care workers for two weeks. Due to the limited supply, everyone will have access to the vaccine months before.
City-run test locations will close on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. A list of test sites around San Antonio can be found on the city’s Coronavirus website.
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